A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 6, September 1, 1812-August 5, 1813

by Charles Oman

CHAPTER I

THE PURSUIT OF CLAUSEL

At ten o’clock on the morning of June 22nd Wellington moved out from Vittoria in pursuit of the French. Touch with them had been lost on the preceding night, as the divisions which had fought the battle had ceased to move on after dark, and had settled into bivouacs four or five miles beyond the city. The enemy, on the other hand, had continued his flight in the darkness, till sheer exhaustion compelled each man to throw himself down where he was, all order having been lost in most units, and only Reille’s rearguard of the Army of Portugal having kept its ranks. About midnight the majority had run to a standstill, and the hills along the Salvatierra road began to be covered with thousands of little fires, round which small groups were cooking the scanty rations that they had saved in their haversacks. ‘The impromptu illumination had a very pretty effect: if the enemy had seen it he might have thought that we had rallied and were in order. But it was only next morning that the regiments began to coalesce, and reorganization was not complete till we got back to France. Generals were seeking their divisions, colonels their regiments, officers their companies. They found them later—but one thing was never found again—the crown of Spain, fallen for ever from the brow on which it was not to be replaced[618].’ King Joseph himself, pushing on ahead of the rout, reached Salvatierra, sixteen miles from the field, before he dismounted, and shared a meagre and melancholy supper with D’Erlon and two ministers, the Irish-Spaniard O’Farrill and the Frenchman Miot de Melito. To them entered later Jourdan, who had been separated from the rest of the staff in the flight. He flung himself down to the table, saying, ‘Well, gentlemen, they would have a battle, and it is a lost battle,’ after which no one said anything more. This was the old marshal’s reflection on the generals who, all through the retreat, had been urging that it was shameful to evacuate Spain without risking a general action. After three hours’ halt, sleep for some, but the wakefulness of exhaustion for others, the King’s party got to horse at dawn, and rode on toward Pampeluna, the army straggling behind them. It was a miserable rainy day with occasional thunderstorms: every one, from Joseph to the meanest camp-follower, was in the same state of mental and physical exhaustion. But the one thing which should have finished the whole game was wanting—there was practically no pursuit.

Of Wellington’s nine brigades of cavalry only two, those of Grant and Anson, had been seriously engaged on the 21st, and had suffered appreciable losses. The other seven were intact, and had not been in action. It is obvious that they could not have been used to effect in the darkness of the night, and over rough ground and an unknown track. But why an early pursuit at dawn was not taken in hand it is difficult to make out. Even the same promptness which had been shown after Salamanca, and which had been rewarded by the lucky gleanings of Garcia Hernandez, was wanting on this occasion. There was no excuse for the late start of the cavalry, and in consequence it rode as far as Salvatierra without picking up more than a few wounded stragglers and worn-out horses and mules. The French had gone off at dawn, and were many miles ahead.

The infantry followed slowly; not only were the men tired by the late marches and their legitimate exertions in the battle, but many thousands had spent the hours of darkness in a surreptitious visit to the field of the convoy, and had come back to the regimental bivouac with plunder of all kinds bought at the cost of a sleepless night. Many had not come back at all, but were lying drunk or snoring among the débris of the French camps. Wellington wrote in high wrath to Bathurst, the Minister for War: ‘We started with the army in the highest order, and up to the day of the battle nothing could get on better. But that event has (as usual)[619] annihilated all discipline. The soldiers of the army have got among them about a million sterling in money, with the exception of about 100,000 dollars, which were got for the military chest. They are incapable of marching in pursuit of the enemy, and are totally knocked up. Rain has come and increased the fatigue, and I am quite sure that we have now out of the ranks double the amount of our loss in the battle, and that we have more stragglers in the pursuit than the enemy have, and never in one day make more than an ordinary march. This is the consequence of the state of discipline in the British army. We may gain the greatest victories, but we shall do no good till we so far alter our system as to force all ranks to do their duty. The new regiments are as usual worst of all. The —— are a disgrace to the name of soldier, in action as elsewhere: I shall take their horses from them, and send the men back to England, if I cannot get the better of them in any other manner[620].’

This, of course, is one of Wellington’s periodical explosions of general indiscriminating rage against the army which, as he confessed on other occasions, had brought him out of many a dangerous scrape by its sheer hard fighting. He went on a few days later with language that can hardly be forgiven: ‘We have in the Service the scum of the earth as common soldiers, and of late years have been doing everything in our power, both by law and by publication, to relax the discipline by which alone such men can be kept in order. The officers of the lower ranks will not perform the duty required from them to keep the soldiers in order. The non-commissioned officers are (as I have repeatedly stated) as bad as the men. It is really a disgrace to have anything to say to such men as some of our soldiers are[621].’ The Commander-in-Chief’s own panacea was more shooting, and much more flogging. All this language is comprehensible in a moment of irritation, but was cruelly unjust to many corps which kept their discipline intact, never straggled, and needed no cat-o’-nine-tails: there were battalions where the lash was unknown for months at a time. But Wellington usually ignored the moral side of things: he seldom spoke to his men about honour or patriotism or esprit de corps, and long years afterwards officially informed a Royal Commission on the Army that ‘he had no idea of any great effect being produced on British soldiers by anything but the immediate fear of corporal punishment.’ It is sad to find such mentality in a man of strict honour and high military genius. On this particular occasion he, no doubt, did well to be angry: but were there no regiments which could have marched at dawn to keep up the pursuit? Undoubtedly there were many: Ponsonby’s heavy dragoons had ridden through the chaos of plunder without a man leaving the ranks, and had bivouacked five miles to the front of Vittoria. There were several infantry brigades which had been so far to the left or the right in the action that they never came near the temptation, and only remembered the night of the 21st as one of short commons and hard lying[622]. Perhaps the sight of the disgraceful confusion in and about Vittoria gave the Commander-in-Chief an exaggerated impression of the general condition of the army. And undoubtedly he had an absorbing night’s task before him, when he sat down to work out the entire recasting of his operations which the victory had made necessary.

His main design, as expressed in the order for the 22nd, was to send Giron and Longa into Biscay by the great Bayonne chaussée, to pursue Maucune’s convoy and to cut off, if possible, Foy and the garrison of Bilbao, while the Anglo-Portuguese army marched in pursuit of the French main army on Pampeluna. Clausel had been heard of in the direction of Logroño; a zealous and patriotic innkeeper had ridden 40 miles on the night of the 20th to report to Wellington the position of the head of his column; and it was the knowledge that he was more than a full day’s march from Vittoria which had enabled the arrangements for the battle to be made with complete security against any intervention on his part[623]. But, though it was most probable that he would have heard of the disaster to the King’s army, and have turned back to Pampeluna or Saragossa, there was a chance that the news might not have reached him. If so, he could be at Vittoria by the afternoon of the 22nd, and his appearance there might prove very tiresome, as the British hospitals and the whole spoil of the battle would have been at his mercy. Wherefore Wellington, who somewhat underrated Clausel’s strength[624], left behind at Vittoria the 5th Division and R. Hill’s cavalry brigade to guard the place: the 6th Division was due to arrive at noon, or not much later, from Medina de Pomar, so that 12,000 men would be available if the possible but improbable event of a raid on Vittoria should come to pass.

These precautions having been taken, the army marched off at ten o’clock, in three columns, the ‘Centre Column’ of previous days with head-quarters and the bulk of the cavalry sticking to the main Salvatierra-Pampeluna road, while Hill and Graham kept to side-tracks[625], which were available so long as the march lay in the plain of Vittoria, but converged on Salvatierra, where the watershed comes, and the mountains of Navarre block the way. Here all the roads met, and there was a steep rise and a defile, before the head-waters of the Araquil, the main river of north-western Navarre, were reached.

That afternoon Wellington’s quartermaster-general, George Murray—about the only man who ever dared to make a suggestion to his chief—asked him whether it might not be worth while to send a detachment northward, by the mountain road which goes from Salvatierra to Villafranca on the great Bayonne chaussée. For Giron and Longa might have been detained by the French forts at the defile of Salinas, at Mondragon and elsewhere, and so have failed to get forward in their pursuit of Maucune’s convoy and the Bilbao garrison. But a force sent across the hills from Salvatierra would cut in to the chaussée behind the fortified posts; and, if the convoy were moving slowly, might catch it as it passed through Villafranca, or at any rate intercept other stray bodies of French troops[626]. Wellington approved the idea at once, and ordered Graham to take the greater part of his own column—the 1st Division, Pack’s, and Bradford’s Portuguese, and Anson’s cavalry brigade,—to leave the pursuit of the King’s army, and to march to co-operate with the Spanish troops who had already been detached to press the retreat of the French garrisons of Biscay. The road Salvatierra-Villafranca turned out practicable for all arms, but very trying both to cavalry and artillery, its first stage being a long uphill pull, over a road of the most stony kind—on the watershed at the Puerto de San Adrian it was taken through a tunnel cut in the solid rock. The diversion of Graham’s column being an afterthought—the orders for it were only issued at 3 p.m.—there was some delay in finding the troops in an afternoon of blinding rain, and turning them on to the new direction. The general himself, as his dispatch shows, was not reached by Wellington’s orders till next morning[627]. Only the light brigade of the German Legion got well forward on the 22nd,—the rest of the 1st Division and Bradford’s Portuguese hardly got started. Anson’s Light Dragoons and Pack’s Portuguese, like Graham himself, never received their orders at all that night, having pushed on beyond Salvatierra for two leagues or more, where the officers sent in search of them failed to catch them up. They had actually gone forward some miles farther towards Navarre, on the morning of the 23rd, before they were found and set right. This caused a tiresome counter-march of some miles to get back to Salvatierra and the cross-roads. Wellington was much vexed with the bad staff-work, but vented his wrath, unfortunately, not on his own aides-de-camp but on a meritorious officer whom they had failed to find or warn. Captain Norman Ramsay, the hero of the ‘artillery charge’ at Fuentes de Oñoro[628], was attached with his battery to Anson’s cavalry brigade. He was still moving eastward, on the night of the 22nd, when the Commander-in-Chief chanced to come upon him. Wellington at once ordered him to halt, billet his men in a neighbouring village, and wait for new directions. According to Ramsay’s version of the words used, they were that ‘if there were any orders for the troop in the course of the night, he would send them[629].’ But Wellington was under the impression that the phrase used was that Ramsay was not to move until he had direct orders from Head-Quarters as to his route. Next morning about 6 a.m. an assistant quartermaster-general (Captain Campbell) came to the village, and asked Ramsay if he had yet received his directions. On hearing that he had not, the staff-officer told him to follow Anson’s brigade, who (as Ramsay supposed) were still moving eastward; for no hint of the change of route had been given him on the previous night. The battery was started off again on the road towards Pampeluna, and its commander rode on ahead to seek for the cavalry to whom he was attached. At this moment Wellington came up, expressed high wrath at finding the guns on the move in the wrong direction, and asked for Ramsay, who was not forthcoming for some time. Whereupon the angry general ordered him to be put under arrest for flagrant disobedience, and spoke of trying him by court martial. His version of the offence was that ‘Captain Ramsay disobeyed a positive order given him verbally by me, in expectation of a circumstance which occurred, namely that he might receive orders, from someone else to move as I did not wish him to move[630].’ It is easy to see how the vagueness in the wording of the order, or even a misconception of the stress laid upon one of its clauses, brought about Ramsay’s mistake. He understood that he was to halt till he got orders, and took Campbell’s message to be the orders meant. It is pretty clear from Wellington’s own language that Ramsay was not warned that he might receive orders not directly proceeding from G.H.Q., which he was to disregard entirely. Explanation of that kind would not have been in the Wellingtonian manner.

The unfortunate battery-commander, who had done splendid service on the 21st, and had a brilliant record behind him, gained the sympathy of the whole army, and such senior officers as dared continued to make intercession for his pardon. After keeping him for some weeks under arrest, Wellington resolved not to try him, and to send him back to his battery. But he was cut out of the reward which he had earned at Vittoria, and did not receive the brevet advance in rank or the decorations given to the other battery-commanders, so that he practically lost ground in comparison with his equals and fell to the bottom of the list. This was a deadly blow to Ramsay, who was sensitive and full of professional pride: he kept silence—not so his comrades, who filed the incident as another flagrant example of Wellington’s dislike for and injustice to the artillery arm[631]. He fell, still only a battery-commander, at Waterloo.

The result of the miscarriage of orders on the night of the 22nd and the morning of the 23rd was that Graham’s turning column was late in its movement. The general himself was one of the last to get the new direction—the cavalry which should have been at the head of the march was at its tail. The German Light Battalions were very far ahead of all the other units, and had to hold back in order to let the rest come up. Hence the attack on Villafranca was not delivered on the evening of the 23rd, as it might have been, but on the afternoon of the 24th, and in the intervening twenty-four hours the greater part of the French troops whom Graham might have cut off filed through Villafranca on their way to Tolosa and the frontier, and only a flank-guard was brought to action. Of this more in its proper place.

The rest of the troops under Wellington’s immediate eye, the ‘Centre Column’ and Hill’s corps, pursued their way on the 23rd along the Salvatierra-Pampeluna road—only Victor Alten’s hussars got in touch with the tail of King Joseph’s fugitive host, which was moving at a great pace and had a long start. There was now a proper rearguard—Cassagne’s division of the Army of the Centre, which had lost only 250 men at Vittoria, and had been more shaken than hurt, having replaced the much-tried Army of Portugal as the covering force. King Joseph halted for some hours at Yrurzun, and there gave orders for Reille to diverge from the main line of retreat, and to take his two divisions, a cavalry brigade, and all the teams of his lost artillery by the route of Santesteban and the valley of the Bastan, back to the French frontier on the lower Bidassoa[632]. Finding himself so feebly pursued, he had jumped to the conclusion that Wellington might have marched with the bulk of his force on the great chaussée, making directly for Irun and Bayonne. There being nothing to stop him save the scattered detachments under Foy, an invasion of France was possible. Hence Reille was directed to join Foy in haste, and cover the line of the Bidassoa. Thus Graham and Reille were now moving parallel to each other, both in a direct northerly direction, but separated by many a mile of impracticable mountains. The Armies of the South and Centre continued their retreat on Pampeluna.

Meanwhile Wellington on the morning of the 23rd received some important news from Vittoria. The unexpected had happened: Clausel having failed to hear of the King’s defeat—as chance would have it—was marching on the city by the Trevino road. Pakenham had already arrived there, but the 5th Division had gone forward to join the tail of Graham’s column on being relieved by the 6th, nothing having yet been heard of the French till midday. The force on the spot, therefore, was rather weak, if Clausel had meant mischief. But he did not, and was becoming aware of the danger of his own position. He had heard on the 20th, when he was in march along the Ebro from Logroño on Haro, that the King had evacuated Miranda that day, and was drawing back to Vittoria. It was obviously dangerous to seek to join him by the road near the river, and Clausel on the 21st, the day of the battle, was trying to recover touch with the main army by taking the route La Guardia-Trevino. This détour removed him out of striking distance during all the critical hours. By some strange chance he neither met any of the King’s aides-de-camp, who were hunting for him on all sides, nor fell in with any of the fugitives from the routed army either on the night of the 21st nor on the morning of the 22nd. He resumed his march from La Guardia, and reached Trevino in the afternoon. There he heard from afrancesados the news that there had been a disastrous battle on the previous day, but could get no details. He therefore detached some squadrons to explore along the mountain road from Trevino to Vittoria—they made their way as far as the crest of the heights of Puebla, above Berostigueta, driving in first some Spanish irregulars, and then picquets of British cavalry; from the watershed they could see allied troops getting into order, but not their numbers. Pakenham, on being warned by the guerrilleros, had occupied Vittoria town with two Portuguese battalions, drawn up the rest of his troops for a fight, and sent to warn Oswald and the 5th Division, as well as Giron’s Spaniards, who had not gone many miles yet, that trouble was at hand. Both of these forces halted and prepared to turn back.

But on hearing the report of his horsemen Clausel had no thought of a raid on Vittoria: his only idea was to get out of danger, and rejoin the main army as quickly as possible. That Joseph and Jourdan had been beaten, he was now aware; but details were wanting: he did not know whether the rout had been complete, or whether the King’s army was capable of rallying and making head at Pampeluna. If he had understood that all the artillery had been lost, and that a retreat into France was imminent, he might probably have given up the idea of a junction, and have set out in haste to retire on Saragossa, by way of the main road down the Ebro by Logroño and Tudela. But not knowing this, his first plan was to march for Salvatierra by the mountainous road which goes from Viana on the Ebro to the upper valley of the Ega. On the 23rd he marched from Trevino to Viana, on the 24th he started out from that place and went 20 miles as far as Santa Cruz de Campero, where he heard that Mina and all his bands were on his flank, and that an English column was coming down upon him from Salvatierra. The latter rumour was false, but induced Clausel to abandon any idea of taking a short cut to join the King. It would seem also that he had picked up some news as to the crushing effect of Vittoria on the French army, and knew that it must have fallen back on Pampeluna. He hurriedly retraced his steps, picked up the garrison of Logroño and set out to move on Pampeluna by the Mendavia-Puente la Reyna road late on the 25th. His vanguard had got as far as Sesma when he heard that Mina had dropped down from Estella to Lerin, blocking this road also. It might have been possible to attack and beat him, but renewed reports that the British were also approaching disturbed Clausel, and he swerved back to the Ebro by cross-roads and crossed it at Lodosa on the 26th.

This move, which placed him on the high road from Logroño to Saragossa, implied the abandonment of all hope of reaching Pampeluna and joining the King. He had resolved to fall back on Aragon and seek refuge with Suchet’s troops in that direction. But he had lost much time in his counter-marches, and was on the 27th in greater danger than he knew, since Wellington was now coming down from the north, in the hope of heading him off and cutting his line of retreat. And if Clausel had lost as much time in the next five days as he had in the last, his position would have been most desperate, for Wellington had ascertained his whereabouts, and was marching upon him in great strength, with a good hope of intercepting him, if he were still adhering to his original plan of making for Pampeluna and rejoining the King.

The idea that Clausel might be caught and destroyed had come to the British general’s mind on the 26th, when he had reached the environs of Pampeluna, and had made sure that the whole of King Joseph’s armies were well on the road for France. The pursuit had been little more fruitful on the 24th-25th than it had been on the 22nd-23rd. But at least closer contact had been secured with the enemy: on the afternoon of the 24th the leading British troops had brought D’Erlon’s rearguard to action at the passage of the Araquil, in front of the cross-roads at Yrurzun. This combat, in which the 1st German Hussars, the 1st and 3rd battalions of the 95th, and Ross’s battery were engaged against Darmagnac’s division of the Army of the Centre[633] cost the enemy about 100 casualties[634], and one of the only two guns which he had brought off from Vittoria. It was a running fight, in which the rearguard all the way from Yrurzun to Berrioplano was being turned and driven in. But no large captures were made.

While this skirmish was in progress, on the afternoon of the 24th, the main body of the French army was already on the march past Pampeluna towards France. The troops were not allowed to enter the fortress, where only the King, his General Staff, and his courtiers lodged on the night of the 24th. It was feared that the famished soldiery might plunder the stores if they got access to them, so they were taken round by suburban roads, which did not pass through the city. Gazan with the Army of the South started on the evening of the 24th, taking the route by Zubiri and the Pass of Roncesvalles to St. Jean-Pied-de-Port. D’Erlon set out nine hours later, at dawn on the 25th, using the better road by the Col de Velate and the Pass of Maya, which took him to the Bastan, whither Reille had gone before him. But while the Army of Portugal passed on to the lower Bidassoa, the Army of the Centre was ordered to halt in the Bastan and hold its ground if possible.

Only three or four hours after D’Erlon’s column had left the suburbs of Pampeluna the first English vedettes showed themselves on the Salvatierra road. These came from Victor Alten’s light cavalry; they coasted round the city on the south, and picqueted the Puente la Reyna and Tafalla roads, by either of which Clausel might conceivably be on the move to join the King. But no trace of the French could be found, save that of the retiring rearguard of the Army of the Centre. Of British infantry only the Light Division appeared in front of the fortress, on the side of Berrioplano, though the 4th and Grant’s hussars were close behind it. Picton and Dalhousie with the 3rd and 7th Divisions were still farther back on the Salvatierra road, and Hill’s whole corps was told to halt until their predecessors should have cleared the way in front of them. The 5th Division, having received the alarm about Clausel’s raid on Vittoria, had turned back on the 23rd and was a full march behind Hill. The 6th Division had now passed out of Pakenham’s hands into those of Clinton, its normal commander, who had just come up from Lisbon[635]. It remained at Vittoria when all danger from Clausel was over, and had originally been intended to come in on the rear of the 5th Division at Salvatierra, leaving the hospitals and spoils under the guard of some details[636]. But other orders were soon to reach it.

During the night of the 25th Wellington got the news from Mina that Clausel’s column, which he had supposed to be making a hasty retreat down the Ebro, ever since its vain appearance in front of Vittoria on the evening of the 22nd, was much less far off than he had supposed. Owing to its counter-marches on the 23rd-24th it had only just got back to Logroño, and had started off from that town on the 25th by the road north of the Ebro via Mendavia and Sesma, apparently heading for Pampeluna. If this were Clausel’s game, he might be intercepted and caught, and allied columns might thrust themselves between him and his escape towards Saragossa or Jaca. The nearer he got to Pampeluna the better, since the French main army was no longer there, but in rapid march for its native soil.

The orders which Wellington had issued upon the afternoon of the 25th for the movements of the army on the 26th, had contemplated nothing more than the investment of Pampeluna by the 3rd and 7th Divisions on the north side, and the Light and 4th Divisions on the south side of the Arga. But the news which had come in from Mina caused a complete change in his plans: the morning orders of the 26th direct Cole, with the 4th and Light Divisions, not to linger near Pampeluna, but to move off as far as the men could go on the Tudela road—to Mendavil, half-way to Tafalla, if possible: Grant’s hussar brigade was to push ahead in front of the infantry, and discover whether Clausel was to be heard of on this road, or perhaps on the Estella-Puente la Reyna road, which was an alternative (if less likely) track for him to take if marching on Pampeluna. Hill was ordered to hurry up from the rear, and replace in the blockade not only the troops of Cole, but those of Picton and Dalhousie. For the 3rd and 7th Divisions were to get ready to follow Cole’s column the moment that they were relieved: they were to concentrate meanwhile at the village of Sielvas, south of the Arga, and to march southward as soon as Hill came up. But it was calculated that they would not be able to move till dawn on the 27th, as Hill had a long way to come. Ponsonby’s cavalry brigade would attach itself to them when the move should begin. Meanwhile, four divisions being set in motion to head off Clausel from this side, another column was ordered to strike across the mountains and fall in on his rear if possible. The 6th Division was still at Vittoria on the 25th, as was R. Hill’s brigade of heavy cavalry. Clinton (now commanding his old division in lieu of Pakenham) received orders to start off with all speed on the Logroño road, taking the Household Cavalry with him, and to endeavour to catch up the retreating French. He made forced marches via Trevino and Peñacerrada, and reached Logroño on the 27th, where he picked up six abandoned French guns, but learned that Clausel had been gone for two days, and had crossed the Ebro at Lodosa instead of continuing on the Pampeluna road. There was little chance of catching him up, when he had a start of two marches, but Clinton continued the pursuit as far as Lerin on the Miranda-de-Arga road, where he gave it up. The Household Cavalry returned to Logroño, where it was directed to go into billets, as horsemen would not be wanted in the Pyrenees, while the 6th Division marched at leisure from Lerin to Pampeluna[637].

The only real chance of catching Clausel was to head him off at Tudela, by means of the four divisions which were descending upon him down the Tafalla road. But a glance at the map will show that he could only have been intercepted if he had displayed uncommon torpidity. For having crossed the Ebro at Lodosa on the 26th he was only 35 miles from Tudela on a good road: and marching hard he reached the town on the afternoon of the 27th, when the advanced cavalry of the column sent to intercept him had only got to Olite, 25 miles to the north, and the Light Division at the head of the infantry column was 10 miles behind at Barasoain. Clausel did not halt more than a few hours at Tudela: there was no need for the intervention of the treacherous alcalde—who figures in legends of the time—to bid him press on hard for Saragossa. For the design, attributed to him by some of the contemporary British diarists, of marching up from Tudela along the Aragon river, with the object of reaching France and joining the King by way of Sanguesa was never really in his mind. Ever since he had crossed the bridge of Lodosa his only desire was to get to Saragossa in the shortest possible time. Starting off again at dawn on the 28th, with his force increased by the garrison of Tudela, he marched that day twenty miles to Mallen, and on the 29th a similar distance to Alagon. On the 30th a shorter stage of 15 miles brought him to Saragossa, where he found General Paris, the Governor of Aragon, still completely ignorant of the battle of Vittoria, though it had taken place nine days back.

Since the 26th Clausel had been practically out of danger, for he had the Ebro, whose bridges at Lodosa and Tudela he had destroyed, between him and Wellington’s columns. There was no force which could have stopped him, for there are 20 miles less of road between Lodosa and Tudela than between Pampeluna and Tudela. Wellington had hoped for a moment that Mina might have intercepted the French column at Tudela, and have held it in check long enough to allow the British to come up. But though Mina was, so far as mere distances went, capable of striking at Tudela, two things prevented him from being able to do so—the first was the obstacle of the Ebro, the second the fact that Tudela was a fortified place with a competent garrison. Even if the great guerrillero had got his men across the river, he certainly could not have captured Tudela, and equally certainly would have been beaten by Clausel, when the French column—double his available force in numbers—came up, if he had dared to offer battle in the open near the town.

During the night of the 27th Wellington heard that Clausel had slipped past Tudela in haste, and that Mina, quite unable to stop him, was only able to follow him with his cavalry—to which Julian Sanchez’s Lancers had joined themselves. At a very early hour on the 28th—before 5 o’clock in the morning—the British Commander-in-Chief issued a fresh set of orders in view of this untoward news[638]. They are a little difficult to understand, but internal evidence seems to show that Wellington must have received some sort of report tending to make him think it possible that Clausel, instead of falling back on Saragossa and joining Suchet’s army, might march across country by the road Tauste-Exea-Un Castillo-Jaca, or the alternative road Exea-Luna-Murillo-Jaca, in order to cross the Pyrenees by the pass of Canfranc and join the King’s army in Bearn. Or he might march through Saragossa in haste, and make for Jaca by the Gallego river[639]. There was a bare possibility of intercepting him by turning the whole pursuing column eastward, and taking it into the valley of the river Aragon, from which it would march by Sanguesa and Berdun on Jaca. The weak point of the scheme was that there was no certainty that Clausel would march on Jaca at all: he might stop in Aragon and combine his operations with those of Suchet. Or even if he did start for Jaca, when he heard that his road was intercepted by British troops, he would naturally turn back and cast in his lot with the French Army of Aragon, rather than with the King.

It is therefore rather surprising to find that Wellington imposed two days of heavy marching on his left wing, on the bare possibility that Clausel might be intercepted at or near Jaca. The orders for the 28th June were for the cavalry at the head of the column to make the long march Olite-Caparrosa-Caseda, by the good but circuitous road along the valley of the Aragon, taking in charge the artillery belonging to the infantry divisions. The latter were to cut across from the Pampeluna to the Sanguesa roads by country tracks in the hills—the Light Division by Olite-Beyre-Gallipienzo, the 4th Division by Tafalla-St. Martin de Unx-Gallipienzo. The 3rd and 7th Divisions, farther behind, went from Mendavil by Olleta to Caseda. This move concentrated 30,000 men in a solid body on a decent road—but left a very long gap between them and the troops blockading Pampeluna—and the gap would grow longer each day that the marching force pushed north-eastward up the course of the Aragon on its way to Jaca[640].

On the following day (June 29th) the column, now with the 3rd Division at its head and the 4th Division at its tail, had moved along the river till its head reached Sanguesa, when Wellington suddenly made up his mind to relinquish the scheme, which (as he himself owned) had never been a very promising one. He wrote to Castaños that Clausel, having passed Tudela marching hard for Saragossa, had got too long a start, and could not be caught. The plan of intercepting him at Jaca had been given up, firstly because it would probably have failed, and secondly because, if it had succeeded, it would only have forced Clausel to join Suchet—which was not a thing to be desired[641]. A third reason, which he did not cite to Castaños but reserved for Lord Bathurst’s private eye, was that the Army was marching very badly, with many stragglers, and many marauders. ‘The British on the 17th June were 41,547 rank and file: on the 29th, 35,650 rank and file—diminution, 5,897. Now the loss in the battle was 3,164—so that the diminution from irregularities, straggling, &c., for plunder, is 2,733.’ The Portuguese before the battle were 25,489—their present strength is 23,044. As they lost only 1,022 in the battle, they show an extra diminution of another 1,423 rank and file, from the same causes as the British. ‘There are only 160 men in the hospital which I established—the others are plundering the country in different directions.’ The truth was, that the Army was sulky—the men had not got over the effects of the looting at Vittoria, the weather had been bad, and the hunt after Clausel had been regarded by officers and men alike as a wild-goose chase.

The French General gave his men three days’ rest at Saragossa (June 30-July 2) and then started to march up the Gallego river to Jaca, where the head of his column arrived on July 6th: he then halted his divisions for some days, stopping in a position where he could either cross the pass of Canfranc into France, for he had no field-guns or wheeled transport with him, to impede his passage by that steep defile, or else return into the plains of Aragon. If Suchet should come to Saragossa with the Army of Valencia, he could drop back to meet him. But on the 11th arrived the news that Saragossa had been evacuated on the preceding day, after some indecisive fighting between General Paris’s garrison and the bands of Mina and Duran, who had beset the city on both sides of the Ebro. All chance of a junction with Suchet having vanished, Clausel crossed the Pyrenees next day, after leaving a garrison in Jaca. He came down into the Val d’Aspe on the French side, with 11,000 infantry, 500 horse, and six mountain guns packed on mules—his sole artillery. He had lost somewhere about 1,500 men in his long march—some broken-down stragglers, others sick left in hospital at Tudela and Saragossa. All these fell into the hands of Mina, but the casualties in actual fighting had been practically nil. By July 15th the whole column, marching over the Pyrenean foot-hills, had reached St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, and come into touch with the Armies of the South and Centre, who had so long and vainly desired to see Clausel.

Meanwhile Wellington, having stopped his eastward march on June 29th, had given his troops one day’s rest, and then drawn them back toward Pampeluna by the road through Monreal. He was now about to take up the pursuit of the King’s troops, which had been abandoned on the 25th while he went off on his fruitless hunt after Clausel—an enterprise which would have been far better left to Mina and the guerrilleros, for there never had been much probability of its succeeding. But the new move required several days of preparation, since four divisions had to be brought back from the valley of the Aragon, and one more, the 6th, to come up from Lerin via Puente La Reyna. And it was necessary to provide a considerable force for the blockade of Pampeluna. The instructions for July 1 were that Hill was to make the first move, by marching northward with the 2nd Division, handing over the investment of Pampeluna to Silveira’s Portuguese and Morillo’s Spaniards[642], to whose assistance there would come up in 24 hours the 7th Division, and a little later the 3rd Division. Hill was to march by the Col de Velate and Santesteban into the Bastan, from which it was intended that he should drive out D’Erlon’s divisions.

But these operations belong to the fighting of July, and before dealing with them it is necessary to go back to June 22nd, in order to follow the fortunes of the other large French force, which might have been present at the battle of Vittoria, but was not.

SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER II

THE PURSUIT OF FOY

We left General Foy at the decisive moment when he received the dispatch forwarded by Thouvenot from Vittoria, which informed him of the King’s retreat beyond the Ebro, and suggested that he might come in to join the main army, but left him the fatal choice of deciding whether his own immediate operations were or were not of such paramount importance that they could not be abandoned[643]. Foy decided, and many other generals have made a similar error in all ages, that his own job was the really important thing. The dispatch reached him on the 19th, when he had his division concentrated at Bergara, and could have brought it to Vittoria in time for the battle. Probably the brigade of Berlier, belonging to the Army of the North, which was under his orders, could also have been brought in from Villafranca to Vittoria by the 21st.

But on the very eve of the decisive engagement, and with Jourdan’s dispatch advising him ‘de se rapprocher de Vittoria’ before his eyes, Foy decided that the petty affairs of the Biscay garrisons were of more importance than the fate of the King’s Army. Instead of bringing down his own and Berlier’s troops to Vittoria, where 5,000 bayonets would have been most welcome to the depleted Army of Portugal, he proceeded to disperse them. He sent, on the 20th, two battalions to El Orrio to facilitate the retreat of the garrison of Bilbao, dispatched two others to Deba, on the coast, to guard against a rumoured British demonstration against that port, and remained at Bergara with the 6th Léger alone. Orders were forwarded to Berlier to stand fast at Villafranca, and to the troops expected from Bilbao to make the best pace that they could, as the Army of Galicia would soon be upon them[644]. Giron’s demonstration on the Balmaseda road had convinced Foy that the Spanish 4th Army was aiming at Bilbao—he could not know that Wellington had brought the Galicians down by Orduña to join his main body.

On the evening of the 21st the division of Maucune, escorting the convoy which had started from Vittoria at dawn, came through the pass of Salinas unmolested. Its general met Foy, and told him that he had heard heavy cannonading for many hours behind him, but had no notion of what was going on upon the Zadorra. The column bivouacked between Mondragon and Bergara, and started off again before daybreak. It had not gone more than a league when fugitives began to drop in from Vittoria, bringing news of the disaster. The King’s army had been routed—his artillery abandoned: he had been pushed aside on to the Pampeluna road, and Allied columns were coming up the great chaussée making for Bergara and Durango. On hearing these depressing news the commandants of the forts which guarded the passes—those of Arlaban, Mondragon, and Salinas—spiked their guns, and fell back without orders to join Foy at Bergara.

The news was only too true. On the night of the battle Wellington had issued orders for Longa’s Division to set out at dawn on the 22nd to force the passes, and, if possible, to overtake Maucune’s unwieldy convoy. Giron was to follow, when his men, who had suffered dreadful fatigue in their forced march from Orduña, were capable of movement. As the Galicians were terribly under-gunned—there appear to have been only six pieces with the 12,000 infantry—Wellington lent them two batteries from the British artillery reserve[645]. Giron started from the neighbourhood of Vittoria at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and had gone only some six miles when the news of Clausel’s raid was sent to him by Pakenham. The whole army halted and began to retrace its steps, with the object of joining the 6th Division and fending off this unexpected attack. But the return march had hardly begun when the message arrived that Clausel’s cavalry had retreated in haste, and that there was no danger on the side of Vittoria. Giron therefore resumed his original advance, but only reached Escoriaza, a hamlet half-way between Salinas and Mondragon after dark[646]. His troops were worn out, and had not received any regular rations that day.

It thus chanced that only Longa’s Division continued the advance along the Bayonne chaussée on the 22nd, and that all day the Cantabrians were far ahead of, and quite out of touch with, the Army of Galicia. It was with this small force alone that Foy had to deal. The French General had been prepared for trouble by the ominous news that Maucune had given him on the previous day, and conceived that it was his duty to hold the passes as long as was prudent, in order to gain time for the convoy to get on its way, and for the garrison of Bilbao to come in from the right rear. Accordingly he was much vexed to find that the officers commanding the Mondragon forts had evacuated them, and had fallen back on Bergara. He resolved to hold the defile if possible, and marched back toward it, taking with him the only two battalions of his division which he had at hand[647], and the garrisons of the three forts.

The fort of Mondragon was found empty—there were no enemies visible save some local guerilleros who fled. But on advancing a little farther, Foy came on the head of Longa’s column, descending from the defile of Salinas. He spent the whole afternoon in a series of rearguard actions, making his men fall back by alternate battalions, and defending each turn of the road. The French troops behaved with great steadiness, and Longa was cautious, having received false news that the Bilbao garrison had joined Foy. He contented himself with turning each successive position that the enemy took up, and at nightfall had only got about two miles beyond Mondragon. Here he halted, having occupied the fort (where he found six spiked guns) and taken 53 prisoners. Foy had lost about 200 men in all in the long bickering, and had been himself slightly wounded in the shoulder, though he was not disabled: the Spaniards probably somewhat less[648].

During the evening hours three more battalions of Foy’s own division arrived at Bergara, but the garrison of Bilbao and St. Pol’s Italians had not yet been heard of. Having now 3,000 men in hand, the French general resolved to hold Longa up, until the missing troops should have passed behind him and got into a safe position. He waited opposite the Cantabrians all the morning, but was not attacked: a reconnaissance sent out reported that the enemy was quiescent at Mondragon. The fact was that Longa had heard that the French had received reinforcements, and was waiting for Giron to come up with the three Galician divisions. They arrived by noon, much fatigued and drenched by heavy rain, and Giron contented himself with making arrangements for an attack on Bergara on the next morning.

But this attack was never delivered, for Foy having at last picked up the missing brigades, retreated on Villareal during the afternoon, using St. Pol’s Italians as his rearguard. He says in his dispatch that he had deduced from Longa’s strange quiescence the idea (quite correct in itself) that the Spaniards were refraining from pushing him, because they were hoping that he would linger long enough at Bergara to be cut off by some other column, coming from Salvatierra on to Tolosa far in his rear. And Graham’s force had actually been detached for this very purpose that afternoon—but Giron did not know it, and was really detained only by the exhaustion of his troops. It was not till evening that he got a dispatch from Wellington directing him to press hard upon Foy and delay his march, because an Anglo-Portuguese force was moving by the Puerto de San Adrian to intercept his retreat[649]. But Foy, having guessed what plans might be brewing for his discomfiture, had not only retreated betimes, but ordered Maucune, who was now a day’s march in front of him with the convoy, to drop the impedimenta and bring all his fighting force back to Villafranca, to block the road from Salvatierra until he and his 8,000 men should have got past the point of danger. This order Maucune executed on the morning of the 24th, turning the convoy into Tolosa, and turning back to hold the junction of the roads, with one of his brigades in Villafranca town, and the other thrown forward across to the river Oria to Olaverria and Beassayn on the south bank. News had by this time come to hand that the march of a British column from Salvatierra across the hills had been verified, and that the peril was a real one. Wherefore Foy pressed his retreat, and sent Maucune orders to hold on at all costs till the column from Bergara should have passed his rear.

Now Wellington’s orders to Graham to cut in by the Puerto de San Adrian with the 1st Division, Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese, and Anson’s Light Dragoons, had been issued late on the 22nd, but had only reached the General and the greater part of his troops on the morning of the 23rd. Of all the column only the two Light Battalions of the King’s German Legion and Bradford’s Portuguese had turned off that night. Consequently on the 23rd, the critical day, Graham and the bulk of his command were toiling up the pass in heavy rain, and had not crossed the watershed, only Bradford and the two German battalions having reached the village of Segura. It was not till dawn on the 24th that Anson’s cavalry and Pack’s Portuguese got to the front; the rest of the infantry was still far off. Graham then advanced on Villafranca, and soon came into collision with Maucune, who was already in position covering the cross-roads. The head of Foy’s column, coming in from the West, was clearly visible on the other side of the Oria in the act of passing behind the screen formed by Maucune’s covering force. He had started from Villareal before dawn, and got clear away before Longa and Giron were on the move, or able to delay him.

Graham attacked at once, in the hope of driving in Maucune before Foy could get past. Bradford’s Portuguese, endeavouring to turn the French flank, pushed to the right; Halkett’s Germans, supported by the grenadier and light companies of Pack’s brigade, made for Beassayn on the left wing. Bradford’s leading unit, the 5th Caçadores, attacking recklessly on unexplored ground, was thrown back at its first assault; but the Brigadier, extending other battalions farther to his right, ended by taking the village of Olaverria and pushing his immediate opponents across the river. The German light battalions carried Beassayn at their first rush. But Maucune, retiring to a new position on high ground immediately above Villafranca, continued his resistance, trying to gain time at all risks. In this he was successful: Foy, hurrying past his rear, got well forward on the Tolosa road with his two leading brigades—the other two he dropped behind the town, to support Maucune or relieve him when he should be driven in.

Owing to the early hour—three in the morning—at which Foy had started on his retreat from Villareal, the bulk of Giron’s army was never able to catch him up. Only Longa’s Cantabrians, leading the advance as usual, came into contact with his rear brigade—St. Pol’s Italians—at the defile of La Descarga west of Villafranca. Failing to force a passage by a frontal attack, Longa turned the position; but the delay permitted St. Pol to get off with small loss and to catch up the rest of Foy’s column.

By three in the afternoon Graham was beginning to outflank Maucune’s line about Villafranca, with Bradford’s brigade on his right and Pack’s on his left, while Longa had come in sight upon the chaussée. Thereupon the French General, having held his ground for the necessary space of time, made a prompt retreat along the Tolosa road, pursued but not much harmed by the Portuguese.

This ended a rather unsatisfactory day—the French had lost more men than the Allies[650], but the trap to catch them had failed completely. It is clear that if Graham’s column could have crossed the Puerto de San Adrian twelve hours earlier, or if Giron had pressed Foy hard and delayed his movements either on the 23rd or on the 24th, the scheme would have worked. Bad staff work was apparently responsible in some measure for both of these failures, though the extreme inclemency of the weather was a secondary cause. Foy’s conduct of the operations on the 22nd-23rd appears a little rash—he might have been caught but for his good luck. But till he had picked up the troops from Bilbao, at noon on the 23rd, he was constrained to wait at Bergara; and after he had once received them he marched hard, and so escaped, thanks to his wise precaution in sending Maucune to Villafranca.

After the combat of the morning Graham moved forward a few miles as far as Ichasondo and neighbouring villages on the Tolosa road, while Giron came up in the evening, and billeted his army in Villafranca, Beassayn, and other places on the Oria. As the missing brigades of the 1st Division appeared that night, there were now some 10,000 Anglo-Portuguese[651] and 16,000 Spaniards[652] massed along the chaussée; Foy, having picked up the garrisons of Tolosa and some smaller places, and having been joined by a stray brigade from the Army of the North, had also as many as 16,000 men in hand[653], so that the opposing forces on both sides had swollen to a considerable strength.

Graham having failed (through no fault of his own) to intercept the enemy’s retreat at Villafranca, and regarding extreme haste as no longer necessary, since the scheme had miscarried, set himself to carry out Wellington’s orders to drive back the enemy to the Bidassoa without any great hurry. He was much hampered by the fact that Giron’s army had outmarched its train, and was therefore suffering for want of supplies, which could not be procured in the mountains of Guipuzcoa. On the 25th he brought the whole of the allied forces up to Alegria, half-way to Tolosa, driving out Maucune’s division, which Foy had left there as a rearguard. It was then discovered that the enemy had taken up a long and extensive position on each side of Tolosa, and showed no disposition to give ground. It was clear that he must be driven off by force.

Foy, as he explains in his dispatch of June 28th[654], had resolved to make a stand at the junction of roads in Tolosa, because he was obsessed by a theory (less accurate than that which he had formed as to Graham’s march two days before) to the effect that King Joseph might have dispatched part or the whole of his army, by the road which leads from Yrurzun on the Araquil to Tolosa across the mountains, in order to transfer it to the lower Bidassoa and the Bayonne road. He was still ignorant of the full effects of the battle of Vittoria, and having heard cannonading far to the south-west on the 23rd[655] had jumped to the conclusion that the main army might be moving up to join him at Tolosa. As a matter of fact King Joseph had turned a detachment off the Pampeluna road at Yrurzun—Reille’s two divisions—but they had been sent not by the more westerly road to Tolosa, but by the Col de Velate route to Santesteban, on which they travelled fast because they had no guns or transport.

But to cover the imaginary movement Foy disposed his troops in front of the junction of roads. Tolosa town lies in a narrow defile, through which pass the Oria river and the great chaussée. It had been prepared long before for serious defence, as it was one of the chief halting-places on the great road from Bayonne to Madrid. The old walls had been strengthened with blockhouses, the gates were palisaded outside and had guns mounted by them. The town blocks the defile completely, but is commanded by steep hills on either side.

Foy sent on the great convoy which Maucune had escorted, under charge of four battalions commanded by General Berlier. The rest of his troops he disposed for defence. De Conchy’s brigade held the fortified town. On the south-east Bonté’s brigade and St. Pol’s Italians were placed on the heights above the Lizarza torrent, a forward position in which they protected the Pampeluna road. The second brigade of Foy’s own division was placed on the hill of Jagoz, on the same flank but nearer the town. On the other or western bank of the Oria Rouget’s brigade (the troops from Bilbao) were on commanding ground, flanking the town and blocking two mountain paths which came down on to it from Azpeytia in the valley of the Uroli. Maucune’s division was in reserve behind Tolosa, massed on the chaussée. As Foy very truly observes in his dispatch, the position was strong against frontal attack, and could only be turned by very wide détours by any troops arriving from the south.

This was as evident to Graham as to Foy, and the British General prepared for a long day’s work. His intention was to outflank the position, even though it should take many hours. In the centre the bulk of the 1st Division, followed by Pack’s Portuguese and Giron’s Galicians, advanced up the chaussée on the left bank of the river Oria, and halted a considerable distance from Tolosa. But Longa’s Cantabrians and Porlier’s small Asturian division were sent off to make a very circuitous march over the mountains on the right by Alzo and Gastolu with the object of cutting into the Pampeluna road many miles east of Tolosa, and then taking the town in the rear. A less wide curve was made by a column consisting of Bradford’s Portuguese brigade, with the three Line-battalions of the King’s German Legion in support, who were also to operate to the east of the chaussée and of the river Oria, and were directed to cross the Lizarza ravine and carry the hill behind it, from whence they were to push forward to the Pampeluna road and then turn inwards against the town. A smaller column, consisting of one battalion of Pack’s brigade and the light companies of Giron’s 3rd Division, was to make a corresponding movement to the west, and to endeavour to get on to the hill dominating Tolosa on that side. Nor was this all: information came to hand that Mendizabal had brought to Aspeytia what remained of the Biscayan irregulars whom Foy had routed and dispersed a month back[656]. Graham wrote to beg him to demonstrate with these bands against the Bayonne chaussée north of Tolosa, and to get on to that road if possible and block it.

The main column halted while the flanking operations were pursuing their slow course. The only fighting which took place in the morning was an attack by Bradford’s brigade on the heights occupied by Bonté, opposite Aleon and beyond the Lizarza torrent. The French Brigadier had neglected to guard the passages of the ravine, and allowed the Portuguese to get on to the ridge of his position without much difficulty[657]. He then counter-attacked them, first with his own brigade, then with St. Pol’s Italians also, but was unable to cast them down from the hill: nor could Bradford get forward. All the hours of the early afternoon were spent in an indecisive tiraillade on this front. It is curious to note that both the commanders-in-chief write in sharp criticism of their subordinates: Foy says that Bonté was careless and disobeyed orders; Graham that Bradford’s men, after a good start, fought in a confused and disorderly fashion[658]. On the other flank the Spanish-Portuguese detachment, sent to try to gain a footing on the hills to the west of Tolosa, reported that they had come up against an absolute precipice, and could do nothing.

So matters wore on till about six o’clock in the afternoon, when distant firing in the rear of the French position announced that both Longa on the right and Mendizabal on the left were in touch with the enemy. Graham then ordered a general attack, the three German Line-battalions, hitherto in reserve behind Bradford, being ordered to strike at the Pampeluna road; meanwhile the main column, which had so long waited opposite Tolosa, deployed the two light German battalions in its front, with the Guards Brigade and Giron’s 3rd Division supporting, and advanced against the south face of the town. The detachment to the extreme left, which had failed to get up the precipices in its front, was directed to turn inward to attack the west side of Tolosa.

These orders brought on very heavy fighting, for Foy had held his forward positions so long that he had great difficulty in withdrawing his troops from them, when he found that he was outflanked, and even attacked in the rear. At the south end of the field, along the chaussée, the allied attack failed entirely, the strength of the fortifications of the town having been under-estimated. When the leading battalion (1st Light Battalion K.G.L.) approached the gate, it came into a cross-fire from the blockhouses, and still heavier frontal musketry from the well-lined ramparts, which proved wholly inaccessible. Scaling ladders would have been required to mount them. The line broke, but the men did not retire, but threw themselves down behind walls and in ditches and tried to answer the fire from such cover as they could find. Many took refuge in the courtyard of a convent not far outside the Vittoria gate, from which their colonel, Ompteda, led out a second assault, which melted away under the fire as the first had done. In truth, the attempt was a misjudged one on Graham’s part—possibly his bad eyesight had failed to note the strength of the defences. The 1st Light Battalion lost five officers and 58 men killed and wounded in a quarter of an hour[659], and had to keep under shelter as best it could; the supporting troops were halted and ordered to lie down, while guns were brought up from the rear to batter the gate. This should obviously have been done before, and not after, the assault. The check was unnecessary, as was shown a little later when the artillery smashed the gate by a few shots, and cleared the neighbouring walls.

Meanwhile there had been fierce fighting on the eastern side of the town, where Bradford’s Portuguese, and the three German line-battalions, with Longa’s men on their northern flank, had fallen upon the three French brigades lying outside the town. Bonté’s and St. Pol’s battalions, still frontally engaged against Bradford, suddenly realized the danger of their position, when the Germans attacked their left flank, and Longa appeared almost in their rear. They retreated in haste towards Tolosa, and got jammed outside the Pampeluna gate, which had been blocked for defence and could not readily be entered. To avoid being crushed against the walls, they massed themselves for a counter-stroke, and thrusting back the Germans for a moment, raced along the river-bank, past the foot of the ramparts, till they got under the cover of Foy’s second brigade on the hill of Jagoz, and escaped beyond the north end of the town. The Germans, though in great disorder, made an attack on the Pampeluna gate, which failed for the same reason that had wrecked that on the Vittoria gate—the impossibility of escalading a well-defended rampart.

Meanwhile there was heavy skirmishing going on to the north-west of Tolosa: Mendizabal’s bands had appeared on the mountain road from Aspeytia, and had engaged Rouget’s brigade, which was covering Foy’s right flank. The French general’s dispatch confesses that the troops from the Bilbao garrison, which included some conscript battalions from the Bayonne reserve, behaved badly, lost ground, and had to be rallied by their general’s personal exertions. They were apparently thrown into a panic by an attack delivered on their flank, by the small Spanish-Portuguese detachment which Graham had sent out on his left: it had worked up by the narrow space between the walls of Tolosa and the precipice above, and came up very opportunely to aid Mendizabal. Rouget held on till dark, but with difficulty, and the knowledge that his route of retreat was threatened added to Foy’s anxiety, for Longa was also pushing behind the town on the other side. Accordingly he ordered Deconchy’s brigade to evacuate Tolosa at once, just as the sun was setting, and prepared for a general retreat.

If the order had been given half an hour later, the garrison of Tolosa would probably have been captured whole, for Graham’s guns had just blown the defences of the Vittoria gate to pieces, and the German light battalions burst in with ease at the point where they had been checked before. There was some confused fighting in the streets, but the French got off with no great loss under cover of the darkness, and fell in with the rear of their main column, which went off down the chaussée at great speed. Mendizabal made some prisoners from Rouget’s brigade, as it fell back to join the rest across the slopes, and Longa caught some fugitives on the other flank[660].

Foy says that he lost some 400 men in the fight, which would seem a low estimate, as the Allies could show 200 prisoners, and Bonté’s and Rouget’s brigades had been very roughly handled. Graham reports 58 killed, 316 wounded, and 45 missing—the last all from Bradford’s brigade. Of the Spaniards Longa and Mendizabal only were engaged: Giron’s report (as so often occurs with Spanish documents) gives no figures, only remarking that some of Longa’s 1st battalion of Iberia ‘perished by reason of their rash courage, but had a great share in deciding the day’—presumably by pushing far ahead in the turning movement which caused Foy to order a general retreat. If we allow 200 Spanish killed and wounded, we shall probably not be far out of our reckoning. Had Graham withheld his unlucky assault on the Vittoria gate till it had been well battered, and trusted entirely to his turning movements, he would have got off with a much smaller casualty list. His original design of manœuvring Foy out of Tolosa was the right game, considering the strength of the position. The French general could plead in defence of his risky tactics that he had held up a superior force for a whole day—but at that particular moment time did not happen to matter—as Graham’s leisurely pursuit on the subsequent days sufficiently shows. He was only set on getting Foy across the Bidassoa; and nothing in the general course of the campaign depended on whether he did so a day sooner or a day later. On the other hand, by standing too long at Tolosa Foy nearly lost three brigades, and might indeed have lost his whole force.

The remainder of this side-campaign displays none of the interest of its four first days. Foy retired to Andoain on the night of the combat of Tolosa, where he was joined by the battalions of the 40th and 101st under General Berlier, which had escorted Maucune’s convoy to the frontier, and by the 62nd and a Spanish ‘Juramentado’ regiment withdrawn from Biscay garrisons. This, despite of his recent losses, gave him a force of 16,000 infantry, 400 sabres, and 10 guns. Graham did not press him, his troops being much fatigued: only the indefatigable Longa appeared with his Cantabrians in front of the position. On the 27th the whole French force retired unmolested to Hernani.

It was of course all-important to Foy to know what were the situation and intentions of the King. Nothing could be heard of the main army at Andoain or Hernani, so he detached Berlier’s brigade to seek for news in the Bastan, along the upper Bidassoa. On the 28th Berlier discovered Reille and two divisions of the Army of Portugal at Vera. They were in bad order, without guns and much under strength, though stragglers were rejoining in considerable numbers. Reille had been as ignorant of Foy’s whereabouts as Foy had been of that of the main army. He was rejoiced to hear that all the Biscay garrisons had been saved, and that there was a solid force ready to co-operate with him in the defence of the line of the Bidassoa. His own troops were not yet fit for fighting. Accordingly he sent Foy orders to evacuate Hernani and come back to the frontier, though he need not actually cross the Bidassoa unless he were compelled to do so. By stopping at Oyarzun he could keep up communication with St. Sebastian, which must be needing attention.

The condition of that fortress, indeed, had already been troubling the mind of Foy on his last day of independent command. It lay so near the French border, and had been for years so far from any enemy—Guipuzcoan guerrilleros excepted—that it had been much neglected. When General Rey, named as Governor by King Joseph two days before the battle of Vittoria, arrived with orders to put it in a state of defence, he found it garrisoned only by 500 gendarmes, a battalion of recruits on the way to join the 120th Line, and two weak companies of pioneers and sappers—1,200 men in all. The stores of food were low, the glacis was cumbered with huts and sheds, there was no provision of gabions, fascines, or timber. Moreover, the town was full of Spanish and French fugitives who had preceded the King on his retreat—there were (it is said) as many as 7,000 of them, lingering in Spain till the last moment, in the hope that Wellington might be stopped on the Ebro. The news of Vittoria arrived on the 23rd, and caused hopeless consternation—the place was not ready to stand a siege—the garrison so small that it could not even spare a battalion to escort the tiresome mass of refugees to Bayonne. Rey began in feverish haste to clear the glacis, palisade the outworks, and rearrange the cannons on the walls, but he had too few hands for work, and was in a state resembling despair when on the 28th Foy turned up for a flying visit, saw and acknowledged the nakedness of the land, and promised to do all that he could to help—though it was less than the Governor required. He took away the old garrison—the recruits were not too trustworthy, the gendarmes not siege troops: to replace them he threw in the whole of Deconchy’s brigade—four battalions, about 2,000 infantry—and all the gunners that he could spare. As the garrison of Guetaria, 450 strong, escaped by sea to San Sebastian two days later, and a number of stragglers dropped into the place before the siege began, the gross total of the garrison was raised to some 3,000 men. Rey asked for 4,000, but Foy would not grant him another battalion—and was justified by the course of the siege, for the place was very small and, if it could be held at all, was defensible by the lesser number. The only doubt was whether there would be time to get it in order before the Allies appeared[661]. But perhaps the best service that Foy did for Rey was that he removed, at two hours’ notice, the whole mass of refugees. They marched, much lamenting, for Bayonne, under the escort of the old outgoing garrison. On the 29th Reille ordered Foy to evacuate Oyarzun and fall back to the Bidassoa, and before he had been gone three hours Mendizabal’s Guipuzcoan irregulars, 3,000 strong, appeared in front of the fortress and cut its communication with France. They were an unorganized band, without artillery, but effective enough for stopping the highway.

Graham, seeing that the French had escaped him, and had a clear retreat to the frontier, had made no serious attempt to press them. He was quite content that they should go at their own pace, and was determined not to harass the 1st Division, who, as he wrote to Wellington, were in a state of great exhaustion. To have hurried Foy out of Spain two days earlier would have cost men, and would have had no beneficial effect on the general course of the campaign; for Wellington and the main army were far away in Navarre, and if Graham had reached the Bidassoa on the 26th or 28th, with his own and Giron’s 25,000 men, they could have done nothing, since they had in front of them the fortress of Bayonne, with Foy’s 16,000 men, the 7,000 whom Reille had brought up from Santesteban, and the remains of the general reserve—for though Rouget’s battalions and other detachments had been lent from Bayonne already, there were still a few thousand men in hand. In all, Reille would have had an army as large as Graham’s own, and though some of it was rather demoralized, the fortress, and the strong positions in front of it along the Bidassoa, Nive, and Nivelle, counterbalanced this disadvantage. If Wellington had chosen to march on Bayonne with his main body, the day after Vittoria, the problem would have been a very different one. But since he had preferred to move in pursuit first of King Joseph and then of Clausel, there was nothing more which the commander of a detached corps like that of Graham could accomplish. He did all that his chief required of him, when he pushed Foy out of Spain and laid siege to St. Sebastian. That the project for cutting off the French detachments at Villafranca came to nothing was no fault of Graham’s—being due partly to bad staff-work at Head-Quarters, partly to the chances of rough weather, and partly to Foy’s laudable caution and celerity.

The side-show in Guipuzcoa came to a tame end twenty-four hours after the blockade of St. Sebastian had been formed. On the 30th Reille ordered all the troops on the south bank of the lower Bidassoa to retire into France. Foy’s and Maucune’s divisions crossed the bridge of Behobie, under the protection of four battalions of the Bayonne reserve, which remained on the heights by the hermitage of St. Marcial, and marched to Urogne and other villages down-stream. Lamartinière’s division remained at Vera, Fririon’s (late Sarrut’s) at Hendaye.

Late on the same afternoon the advance-guard of Graham’s army came in sight of the Bidassoa—it consisted as usual of Longa’s untiring Cantabrians only, the 1st Division and the Portuguese having been halted near St. Sebastian, the bulk of the Galicians at Hernani and Renteria. Longa, keeping to the coast, surprised and captured the French garrison of Passages (150 men), which was too late in obeying Reille’s order to retreat on France while the bridge of Behobie was still available. He then came in contact with the covering force on the heights of San Marcial[662], which was at the same time menaced by Castañon with a brigade of the 4th Galician Division, who had come up the high road from Renteria.

The French brigadier evacuated the position at once. Reille had told him that he was only placed there to protect the retreat of Foy. He crossed the Bidassoa, leaving only a detachment of sixty men in the tête de pont which covered the south or Spanish end of the bridge of Behobie; it consisted of a stone blockhouse surrounded with palisades. The further or French end of the long bridge was blocked by the fortified village of Hendaye.

Next morning Graham resolved that the tête de pont must be taken or destroyed, so that the enemy should have no open road by which he might return to Spain. While some Spanish infantry exchanged a vague fusillade across the river with the French in Hendaye, ten guns[663] were turned on the blockhouse. The garrison tried to blow it up and to retreat, but their mine failed, their commanding-officer was killed, and they were about to surrender when Foy sent two fresh companies over the bridge to bring them off. This was done, at the cost of four officers and 64 men, killed and wounded while crossing the much-exposed bridge. Foy then ordered the structure to be set on fire; and as its floor was composed of wood this was easily done: the four arches nearest France were burnt out by the following morning (July 1).

This evacuation, without any attempt at defence, of the bridgehead on the Bidassoa angered the Minister of War at Paris, and still more Napoleon, when the news reached him at Wittenberg nine days later. Foy and Reille had men enough to have held the heights of San Marcial, against anything short of an attack by the whole of Graham’s and Giron’s infantry. And it is certain that Graham would not have delivered any such assault, but would have halted in front of them, and waited for orders from Wellington. The Emperor, who—as we shall presently see—was set on a counter-offensive from the moment when the news of Vittoria reached him, was wild with wrath at the abandonment of the foothold in Spain. ‘It was insane,’ he wrote to Clarke, ‘to recross the Bidassoa: they all show themselves as timid as women[664].’

But whether it would have been possible for the French to hold the Irun-Behobie-San Marcial tête de pont, when Wellington had come up in person from the south, is another matter. Probably he would have decided that the enemy must be thrust back across the Bidassoa, before he dared to sit down to beleaguer San Sebastian. And undoubtedly he had men enough to carry out that operation. But this was no excuse for Reille’s evacuation of the position, one of the highest strategical value, before he was compelled to do so by force. The fact was that Reille, like most of the other French generals, was demoralized at the moment by the recent disaster of Vittoria, and had lost confidence both in himself and in his troops.

SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER III

THE EAST COAST. MURRAY AT TARRAGONA

[N.B.—For Map of Catalonia and Plan of Tarragona see Vol. IV, pp. 538 and 524]

There are certain episodes of the Peninsular War which the British historian has to narrate with a feeling of some humiliation, but which have to be set forth in full detail, if only for the purpose of illustrating the manifold difficulties with which Wellington had to cope. Of these by far the most distressing is the story of General Sir John Murray at Tarragona.

It will be remembered that a diversion on the East Coast formed an essential part of Wellington’s great scheme for the expulsion of the French from Spain, and that he had devoted much care to instructing Murray in the manner in which it was to be carried out. If sufficient shipping to embark 10,000 men could be procured at Alicante, the bulk of the Anglo-Sicilian army was to be transported to Catalonia, and to strike at Tarragona, getting what aid it could from the local Spanish forces under the Captain-General Copons. If, as was to be expected, Suchet should fly northward from Valencia with all his available field-army, to rescue Tarragona, the two Spanish units in the kingdom of Murcia, Elio’s and Del Parque’s armies, were to take the offensive against the detachments which the French Marshal would have to leave behind him to hold down his southern conquests. Murray might fail in Catalonia, if Suchet were rapid and lucky in his combinations; but in that case Elio and Del Parque ought to get possession of the city of Valencia and all its fertile plainland. Or, on the other hand, Suchet might be loth to abandon his advanced position, might hold it in force, and might order Decaen and the Army of Catalonia to make head against the Anglo-Sicilian expeditionary force. If this should happen, the Spanish generals might be held in check, but Murray would have a free hand at Tarragona. With the aid of Copons he ought to be able to take the place, and to throw all the French occupation of Catalonia into disorder. In the end, Suchet would have to evacuate Valencia, in order to save Decaen and the Catalan garrisons. At the worst the expedition of the Anglo-Sicilian army ought at least to have the effect of giving Suchet so much to think about, that he would have no attention to spare for the perils of King Joseph and the fate of Castile.

This last minimum result was all that was achieved. Suchet, it is true, had an anxious time during the critical days of Wellington’s march to Vittoria, and sent no help to the King. But neither was Tarragona taken by the Anglo-Sicilians, nor Valencia by the armies of Elio and Del Parque. Both of those forces endured humiliating checks, from an enemy over whom they had every strategical advantage. And the story of Murray’s operations about Tarragona is not the story of an honest and excusable failure, but one which provokes bitter irritation over the doings of a British general who showed himself not only timid and incompetent, but shifty, mendacious, and treacherous to his allies. There is nothing in the whole history of the Peninsular War which produces such an unpleasant impression as the facts revealed by the minutes of Murray’s court-martial, supplemented by certain documents which ought to have been forthcoming at that trial, but unfortunately were not.

But to proceed to the details of this unhappy campaign. In obedience to Wellington’s orders, Murray began to draw his army in to Alicante between the 25th and 27th of May, the forward positions which the Anglo-Sicilians had held being handed over to Elio’s troops, while those of Del Parque, who had at last been brought up from the borders of Andalusia, took post on Elio’s left, about Yecla and Chinchilla. Both these armies were to move forward, as soon as Suchet should be detected in the act of detaching divisions northward to deal with Murray’s oncoming invasion. The appearance of the Spaniards on ground hitherto held by British outposts gave the Marshal warning that some new plan was developing. A raid by sea was an obvious possibility, but he could not tell whether it might not be directed on a point as far south as Valencia or as far north as Rosas. Till Murray showed his hand only precautionary movements could be made. Suchet was at this moment stronger than he had been at the time of the battle of Castalla. Warned of his danger by the results of that fight, he had strengthened his troops on the littoral at the expense of the garrisons inland. Severoli’s Italian division had been ordered down from Saragossa to Valencia[665]. This heavy draft on the northern section of his army was rendered possible by the fact that Clausel had come far forward into Aragon in pursuit of Mina, so that Saragossa and its region could be held with smaller numbers than usual. The Spanish irregular forces in this direction had full occupation found for them, by the raid of the Army of Portugal into their sphere of operations. And this suited well with Wellington’s general plan—the more that French troops were drawn down to the Mediterranean, the less would there be of them available for service in Castile, when his own blow came to be delivered.

Murray had at his disposal in the harbour of Alicante transports sufficient to carry much more than the force of 10,000 men, which Wellington had named as the minimum with which a raid on Catalonia might be attempted. He was able to embark the whole of his own army, with the exception of the regiment of Sicilian cavalry (he was short of horse-transports), and in addition nearly the whole of Whittingham’s Spaniards—all indeed save one battalion[666] and the attached squadrons. This made up a force of 14,000 infantry, 800 cavalry, and 800 artillery, with 24 field-guns and the battering train which had been sent round from Portugal. The British contingent was a little stronger than at the time of the battle of Castalla, for if one battalion of the King’s German Legion had been sent back to Sicily since that fight, Wellington had permitted Murray to draw in the 2/67th, long in garrison at Cartagena, and had sent him a Portuguese and a British company of artillery to man his battering train[667]. Moreover, two squadrons of Brunswick Hussars had arrived direct from England.

The whole force, having been swiftly embarked at Alicante, sailed on May 31st; and being favoured with a strong south-west wind came in sight of the high-lying Tarragona on June 2nd. The fleet of transports ran into the bay sheltered by Cape Salou, eight miles south of its goal. There would have been no object in risking a more difficult disembarkation on the long open beaches at the mouth of the Francoli river, closer to Tarragona. Before landing his main body Murray shipped off two battalions (2/67th and De Roll-Dillon) under Colonel Prevost, to seize the defile of the Col de Balaguer, the point twenty miles to the south of Tarragona where the coast-road from Tortosa curves round a steep headland between a precipice and the sea. There was a small French fort, San Felipe de Balaguer, blocking the Col, and Prevost was ordered to take it if he could. But its fall was not an absolutely essential condition to the success of the siege, for the road could be cut, blasted away, or blocked with entrenchments north of the fort, at several points where a thousand men could stop a whole army corps. It was desirable to take this precaution, because the Col de Balaguer road was the only route by which succours coming from Valencia could reach the plain of Tarragona, without taking an immense détour inland, by paths impracticable for artillery.

On hearing of the arrival of the British fleet off Cape Salou, General Copons, Captain-General of Catalonia, rode down from his head-quarters at Reus, ten miles away, to report to Murray that he had received Wellington’s instructions, and had done his best to carry them out. The Spanish Army of Catalonia consisted of no more than 15,000 men, even after it had received the two battalions which Wellington had sent to it by sea during the winter[668]. Over 5,500 of them were locked up in garrisons in the interior; many of these were untrained recruits, and none were available for the field. Of the remainder, Copons had brought down twelve battalions to the neighbourhood of Tarragona, leaving only two under his second-in-command, Eroles, to watch the French garrisons in the north[669]. He had also with him his handful of cavalry—370 sabres; field-guns the army had none. Altogether there were 7,000 men ready to join Murray at once: 1,500 more might be brought in, if the French of the northern garrisons should move down to join General Decaen at Barcelona. Copons had certainly done all that was in his power to aid Wellington’s scheme. Murray asked him to lend two battalions to join the brigade that was to strike at Fort San Felipe and to block the Col de Balaguer, and to arrange the rest so as to cover at a distance the disembarkation of the Anglo-Sicilian army. Copons consented, and on the next morning the whole force came ashore, Prevost’s brigade in a creek near the Col de Balaguer, where it found the two Spanish battalions already arrived, the rest of the army at Salou Bay. The expeditionary force was little cumbered with transport, and had but a small allowance of horses and mules: the infantry and some of the field-guns with the greater part of the cavalry were ashore by the early afternoon, and marched that same night on Tarragona, which was invested from sea to sea, Mackenzie and Adam taking up their position by the mouth of the Francoli, Clinton occupying the Olivo heights, and Whittingham extending down to the shore east of the city. The French garrison kept quiet—being of no strength sufficient to justify the showing of a man outside the walls.

General Bertoletti had with him two battalions, one French and one Italian[670], a company of Juramentados, two companies of artillery, and the armed crews of three small vessels which were blockaded in the port—they were turned on to act as auxiliary gunners. The whole did not exceed 1,600 men. This was an entirely inadequate force, and the defences were in an unsatisfactory condition. After Suchet had captured the city in 1811, he had no intention of leaving locked up behind him a garrison of the size required for such a large fortress. The outer enceinte had been left in the condition of ruin consequent on the siege[671], and only the Upper City on its high cliff was occupied. Its western front, where the breaches had been, was repaired; but the Lower City and its fortifications remained practically untouched. All that had been done was to patch up two isolated strong-points, the so-called Fort Royal and Bastion of St. Carlos. These had been cut off from the mass of the ruins, and closed in at the rear: each was armed with one gun. The object of this was merely to prevent British ships from entering Tarragona roadstead and mooring there. These two outlying posts, dangerously remote from the city above, were held by no more than a company each. Bertoletti thought for a moment of abandoning them, since he dared not detach reinforcements from his inadequate garrison, and his communication with the forts was across half a mile of exposed ground: nothing was more likely than that the enemy would slip detachments among the ruined houses and walls of the Lower City, and dig himself in between the Upper City and the weak outlying posts, which must inevitably fall. But reflecting on the advantage of keeping the harbour unusable, he resolved to hold on to them till the last minute. And his policy turned out to be justified, for had they been evacuated, even the torpid and timorous Murray could hardly have avoided the temptation of closing in on the Upper City, which was in no condition to hold out for the space of nine days during which the Anglo-Sicilian army lay in front of it.

From the first moment of his landing Murray seems to have been obsessed with the idea that every disposable French soldier in Catalonia and Valencia would be on his back within a very few days. As his evidence during his court martial shows, he had a notion that Suchet would practically evacuate Valencia, and march against him with three-quarters of his available men, while at the same time Decaen would abandon all Catalonia save the largest towns and bring an even greater force to Tarragona from the north. He had made elaborate, and in part correct, calculations as to the gross force of the two French armies, by which he made out that the enemy might conceivably concentrate 25,000 men against him. For the fact that such a force would have to be scraped together from very remote points, between which communication must be very difficult, he made insufficient allowance. Still less did he calculate out the handicap on the enemy caused by the fact that Suchet and Decaen were out of touch with each other, and would obviously look upon the problem presented to them from different points of view,—all the former’s action being influenced by his wish to hold on to Valencia, all the latter’s by his anxiety not to have his communication with France cut off. Murray assumed that all roads marked on his map would be practicable to the enemy, that Suchet’s information would always be correct, that his troops would march every day the possible maximum, and that they would have no difficulties concerned with food, water, or weather. Every conceivable hazard of war was to fall luckily for the enemy, unluckily for himself. At his trial in 1814 he explained that he was never sanguine of success, and that he did not expect when he sailed that he could take Tarragona[672]. He chose to regard himself as the blind and unwilling instrument of Wellington’s orders, which he would carry out, so far as he could, with an expectation that they would lead to failure. And he observed that the dominating motive which influenced all his doings was that Wellington had written that ‘he would forgive everything excepting that the corps should be beaten or dispersed’[673]. Deducing from this phrase the general policy that he must pursue, Murray came to the conclusion ‘the first principle is the army’s safety’. He started intending to subordinate all chances of success to the remotest risk of defeat. His mind obsessed with this miserable prepossession, he was, in fact, defeated before he had ever set sail. Yet he hid his resolve from his generals, even from the senior officer, Clinton, who would have succeeded to the command if he had fallen sick or received a chance bullet. They all complained that he never gave them any hint of what were his intentions, or showed them Wellington’s orders which it was his duty to carry out. ‘We were totally uninformed,’ said Clinton at the court martial, ‘of the instructions which the Commander of the forces might have for his guidance[674]. The first that we knew of these instructions of the Commander of the forces, and then partially only, was when he produced them at a Council of War on June 17th,’ after the siege of Tarragona was over. Clinton, Mackenzie, and Adam, the three commanders of units, were all very confident in their men: ‘they were in the highest state of discipline and equipment[675],’ said Mackenzie, and spoiling for a fight. Hence their entire amazement as they discovered that Murray was intending to avoid all offensive operations: it even led to an infraction of discipline, when Mackenzie, Adam, and General Donkin[676] called together on their commander to urge on him a more active policy[677], and were chased out of the room with the words ‘it will not do’—a decision which, as Mackenzie remarked, ‘was unanswerable’. For any further urging of the point would have amounted to military disobedience. From the moment when the army landed at Cape Salou on June 3rd, down to the day of its ignominious flight on June 12th, Murray was thinking of nothing but horrible possibilities—he was what the French call a catastrophard.

Probably his most disastrous resolve of all was that which he came to when first he surveyed Tarragona, on the evening of his disembarkation. Though he noted the half-ruinous condition of the two outworks, on which the enemy was working to the last moment, their isolated position, and the fact that they were surrounded by all sorts of cover easily to be seized, he resolved to lay formal siege to them, as if they were the solid front of a regular line of defence. As Napier remarks with perfect good sense, they should have been dealt with as Wellington dealt with the Redoute Renaud at Rodrigo, or Hill with the forts of Almaraz, which were far more formidable works than the Fuerte Real or San Carlos[678]. They should have been taken by force, escaladed, on the night of the formation of the blockade. And being incomplete, ill-flanked, and without palisades or ditch, and under-manned, they undoubtedly could have been rushed. But Murray, instead of trying to gain time for the prompt attack on the main fortress and its badly-stopped breaches, proceeded to lay out approaches and commence batteries on the low ground by the mouth of the Francoli river, with the object of reducing the two outworks by regular operations. On June 4th one battery was commenced near the sea, 600 yards from San Carlos, another farther inland, 900 yards from the Fuerte Real. Their construction was covered by a naval bombardment: Admiral Hallowell moved into the roadstead a brig, three bomb-vessels, and two gunboats, which shelled the Upper City freely, in order to distract the attention of the garrison from the work on the batteries by the Francoli. The fire was kept up from dusk till dawn on the 4th-5th, and repeated on the 6th-7th during the same hours—throughout the day the workers in the trenches kept low. This bombardment had the desired result of permitting the batteries to be finished without molestation, but inflicted no great damage on the city, though it set fire to some houses, and caused casualties both among the garrison and the inhabitants. But unaimed night-fire had of course no effect on the walls of the enceinte.

By dawn on the 6th the two batteries were ready and opened on the outworks with six guns: they kept up the fire all day, and with some effect, suffering themselves very little from the distant counter-fire of the Upper City. At dark, according to the French narrative of the defence, parties of skirmishers came out of the trenches, took cover in the ruins of the lower city and kept up a persistent tiraillade against the outworks[679]. It was expected that they would try to rush them at some chosen hour—and this would undoubtedly have been the right policy. But nothing of the kind happened; the British parties withdrew at dawn, and Bertoletti began to ask himself whether the whole of these feeble operations were not a mere demonstration, intended to draw the French armies of Valencia and Catalonia toward Tarragona, while the real blow was being delivered in some other quarter.

During the second night of naval bombardment, that of the 6th-7th, Murray had ordered a third breaching battery to be built, near the bridge of the Francoli, 300 yards closer to the Fuerte Real than the original battery, No. 2. On the morning of the 7th all three batteries were hard at work, and with good effect; the gorge of the Fuerte Real was blown to bits by flank fire from the new battery, its one gun silenced, its parapet levelled for a long space: the garrison had to keep under cover. At dusk Major Thackeray, the senior engineer of the army, reported that the work could be stormed at any moment. According to Murray’s narrative Thackeray made at the same moment the curious comment, that if the fort were escaladed and occupied, the ground gained would be of no immediate use for the attack on the Upper City, whose most accessible front—the bastions of San Juan and San Pablo—might be much more easily battered from the slopes of the Olivo hill, farther inland, than from the low-lying site of the Fuerte Real. To storm the outworks would cost men—to build new advanced batteries on or near them would cost many more, since they were completely commanded by the Upper City. ‘As the state of the fort was now such that it could be taken whenever convenient,’ wrote Murray, ‘I consented to defer the attack, and directed that the fire upon it should continue only sufficiently to prevent its being re-established[680].’

The decision seems of more than doubtful wisdom. It was from ground near the Fuerte Real that Suchet had pushed forward his approaches in the siege of 1811, and his batteries in the lower town had proved effective. To resolve, after four days spent on battering the outworks, that it was better to attack from a new front, was equivalent to sacrificing the whole of the exertions of those four days, and starting the siege anew. But Murray accepted Thackeray’s scheme, though the engineer warned him that he should require fourteen days more of open trenches to reduce the Upper City. This would relegate the crisis of the final assault to July 21st, and meanwhile Suchet and Decaen would have had three weeks to concentrate, instead of one. The time-problem looked very unsatisfactory.

However the new plan was taken up—more artillery and engineer-stores and more guns were landed on the beach west of the mouth of the Francoli, as were also the remainder of the horses of the cavalry and the field-guns. The disembarkation was not always easy, as the surf on the beach grew dangerous whenever the wind was high. On several days communication with the shore had to be given up for many hours on end. Murray complained that the foreign troops worked slowly and unwillingly, and that he had to replace them with British parties, in order to get up the ammunition from the boats to the batteries[681].

However, progress was made, and in the four days between the 7th and the 10th of June two heavy batteries were thrown up on the high-lying slopes of the Olivo hill, in positions from which they could bring an enfilading as well as a frontal fire to bear upon the three corner bastions of the Upper City, including the roughly repaired breaches in the curtain, by which Suchet had made his entry in 1811. On the 9th and again on the 10th Admiral Hallowell sent his available vessels in-shore to resume the bombardment; and late on the latter day the batteries on the Olivo began their fire, which they continued on the following morning: it was very effective, all the attacked bastions and the curtain between them being much damaged. Meanwhile the old batteries by the Francoli overwhelmed the Fuerte Real and San Carlos forts with renewed fire, destroying such repairs as the garrisons had been able to carry out. The Governor, Bertoletti, made up his mind that there would be a general assault both on the forts and on the Upper City on the night of the 11th, and made such preparations as he could to receive it. But the prospect was gloomy—the garrison was worn out, the walls were crumbling, and there seemed no hope of succour from without.

Meanwhile, harassed as the Governor might be, Murray was in an even greater state of depression. He had never believed, as he acknowledged at his court martial, that he could succeed. The only gleam of hope which ever entered his mind was when on the morning of the 8th he received news that the fort of Balaguer had been taken, so that the road by which Suchet could most easily arrive was completely blocked. At any rate there would be a day or two gained, since the army of Valencia would have to take difficult and circuitous roads, instead of a short and direct one, when it came up.

The siege of the Fort of San Felipe de Balaguer had lasted four days. The place was small, only sixty yards square; it mounted twelve guns, but was held by only a single company. It was in a rocky and inaccessible position, and when Colonel Prevost had landed with his brigade, and had reconnoitred the place on the 3rd, he found that it must be battered by heavy guns. Shelling it with field pieces proved unavailing. Accordingly aid was sought from the fleet, and with great difficulty the sailors of the Invincible got two 12-pounders and a howitzer ashore, to a spot 700 yards from the fort. But the ground was so steep and rocky that it was difficult to construct a battery, and when the fire was opened it proved not very effective. It was only when more guns had been hoisted up the rocks, to a position only 300 yards from the fort, that anything was accomplished. On the evening of the 7th a lucky bomb from a mortar exploded one of the French magazines, and the commandant surrendered[682]. It was thought that he might have held out longer, as his main magazine was intact—but nearly a third of his garrison of 150 men had been hurt, and their morale was low. With the capture of Fort San Felipe the coast road became absolutely blocked to any troops coming from Suchet’s direction, and Murray, as he confessed, ‘entertained a ray of hope, not so much of the capture of Tarragona itself, but that the expedition might prove, as Lord Wellington wished it to prove, an effective diversion in favour of the allied army in Valencia[683].’ It was this success, as he explained, which encouraged him to remain two days longer in front of Tarragona than he would otherwise have done, since the loss of the coast-road would add two marches to the distance which Suchet had to cover in order to join Decaen.

For already this downhearted general was obsessed with panic fears that the enemy might be upon him at any moment. He was gleaning in every rumour of the near approach of Suchet and Decaen, however incredible. On the 4th he had received an express from Prevost, with a message that the Marshal had reached Tortosa and might be at the Col de Balaguer on the 5th. On the 7th there was a report that a heavy French column was at Amposta, near the mouth of the Ebro, marching north. And on the other side Decaen was said to be in movement—‘Could I ever have expected,’ said Murray, a year later, ‘that his army would not be united, that his movable column would have remained divided at Gerona, Figueras, and Barcelona[684]?’ Accordingly he wrote that night to Wellington, ‘I am much afraid we have undertaken more than we are able to perform. But to execute your Lordship’s orders I shall persevere as long as prudence will permit. I have as yet no certain information of Suchet’s movements, nor of Decaen to the eastward. But there are reports of both, and if they prove true, in five or six days I may be attacked by a force infinitely superior, without the hope of a retreat in case of misfortune. I calculate that Suchet can bring into the field 24,000 or 25,000 men without difficulty[685].’ There is not a thought in Murray’s brain of the chance that one of the enemy’s columns might be late, and that it might be possible from his central position to fall upon the other, with his own forces and those of Copons united.

As a matter of fact things were working out most favourably for him. Suchet had seen the great transport-fleet pass the coast of Valencia on the 31st May; but he was wholly in doubt whether the expedition might be intending to strike at Tortosa or Tarragona, at Barcelona or Rosas. The Marshal had to make up his mind to act, before he knew his enemy’s objective or his exact numbers. After many searchings of heart he resolved to keep the bulk of his forces in the kingdom of Valencia, which he was most unwilling to give up, and to march with a column of moderate strength to reinforce the Army of Catalonia. He left Harispe in command in the South, with his own division, that of Habert, Severoli’s Italians, and the bulk of his cavalry, and resolved to move on Tortosa with Musnier’s division, his hussar regiment, three batteries of artillery, and an improvised brigade under General Pannetier, composed of four battalions borrowed some time back from the Army of Catalonia, one battalion of his own, and an odd squadron of Westphalian light horse belonging to the Army of the Centre. The whole made up about 8,000 men[686], a force so weak that it was clear that he dared not attack Murray till he should be joined by the troops of Decaen. Pannetier’s brigade had a long start, as it was about Castellon and Segorbe when the order to march arrived: it reached Tortosa on June 8th, and Perello on the Balaguer road on the 10th. Then the news came in that the fort of San Felipe had capitulated two days before. Pannetier halted, and sent back the information to Suchet, who had reached Tortosa on the 9th, escorted by a squadron of dragoons. But Musnier’s division had taken some time to assemble, only left Valencia on the 7th, and was far behind. Suchet was in no small perplexity this day. The coast-road was blocked: it was the only one by which guns and transport could move directly on Tarragona. No news whatever had been received of Decaen and the Army of Catalonia. Musnier could not reach Tortosa till the 11th. Should he recall Pannetier, wait for the arrival of the rest of his column, and then march with his whole force by the circuitous inland road along the Ebro, by Ginestar, Tivisa, and Momblanch, so as to reach the plain of Tarragona from the north? This would lead to insufferable delays—the country was desolate and waterless, and when the column reached its goal the Army of Copons, with help perchance from Murray, would be in the way. Ten days might easily be wasted, and meanwhile Tarragona would probably have fallen. Information must at all costs be got, and the Marshal finally ordered Pannetier to drop all his impedimenta, and push with his infantry alone by mountain paths from Perello to Monroig, on the edge of the hills overlooking the plain of Tarragona. This was to take a dangerous risk—a brigade of 2,500 bayonets might easily be surrounded by the Catalans and cut off. But the attention of Copons was at this moment distracted to the other direction. Pannetier reached the slopes above Monroig on the night of the 11th-12th, and could get no information there—the people had fled up into the mountains. The only fact that came to his notice was that no cannonading could be heard next morning from the direction of Tarragona: the most natural deduction was that the place had fallen. But in case it might still be resisting, Pannetier ordered a row of bonfires to be lighted along the hillsides, which he thought would be visible to the beleaguered garrison, and would show that succour was at hand. He then drew off again by the same rough paths by which he had come, and returned to Valdellos, half-way back to Perello. From thence he could only send a report of a negative kind to Suchet, who was left none the wiser for this risky reconnaissance. Meanwhile Musnier’s division had at last come up, but there had also arrived the news that Del Parque and Elio were on the move in Valencia, and were pushing back Harispe’s advanced troops. On the 12th-13th-14th the Marshal remained stationary, waiting vainly for news, and fearing the worst. Murray, if he had but known it, had nothing to fear from this quarter.

On the other flank also things were working out in the best possible fashion for the besieger of Tarragona. There was a long delay before the Army of Catalonia could prepare a field force which could dare to face the Anglo-Sicilians. Decaen himself was at Gerona, far away to the North, and got the news of Murray’s landing on June 5th, by a dispatch sent him by Maurice Mathieu, Governor of Barcelona. He had no troops under his hand save the four battalions of Beurmann’s brigade of Lamarque’s division; he could only collect more men by cutting down the garrisons of Figueras and Puycerda, and calling in two brigades (those of Petit and Espert) which were acting as flying columns at the moment, and were out of touch, in the sub-Pyrenean foot-hills. The news that a very large disembarkation had taken place near Tarragona struck him at first with such dismay that he replied to Maurice Mathieu that they could not hope to resist such a force, and that it might even be necessary to evacuate Barcelona[687]. However, resolving to do what he could, he ordered Beurmann’s brigade to march on Barcelona (June 8), and sent orders around for a general shifting of the northern garrisons, so that he hoped to collect another 4,000 men at Gerona in the course of a week, if the flying columns could be discovered and brought in. With this reserve he intended to come down to join the rest of the field force about the 14th or 15th. Meanwhile he ordered Maurice Mathieu to demonstrate against the enemy, without risking anything, or quitting the valley of the Llobregat and the vicinity of Barcelona.

Maurice Mathieu was the only one of the generals in Catalonia, French or allied, who deserves any credit for his conduct in this campaign of blunders. He resolved that the one thing necessary was to take the offensive, and to threaten the besiegers of Tarragona, even if he dared not venture to attack them. Beurmann’s brigade having arrived on June 10th, he marched next day with it and four battalions of his own to Villafranca, half-way between Barcelona and Tarragona, and drove in Copons’ outposts—leaving his base-fortress occupied by a very inadequate garrison. He had only 6,000 infantry and 300 horse with him, so that he was wholly incapable of facing Murray’s expeditionary force if it should show fight. Meanwhile he sent letters to Decaen, telling him that the honour of the Army of Catalonia was at stake, and that it was necessary for him to come down from Gerona without delay, and with every available man. But the Commander-in-Chief did not appear—he was detained by a naval demonstration in the Bay of Rosas. For Sir Edward Pellew, then in command of the Mediterranean Fleet, had run down from his usual cruising ground opposite Toulon, and concentrated a numerous squadron off the coast of the Ampurdam. He came close in-shore, made a great display of boats, and even landed a few hundred marines on June 8th. The news of this disembarkation filled Decaen with the idea that the Tarragona expedition was only a snare, intended to make him draw off all his forces southward, and that the true blow would be struck at Rosas. He concentrated his scattered troops with the object of parrying it, and was so long in detecting his mistake that it was only on June 15th that he set out from Gerona, with four battalions and one squadron, to join Maurice Mathieu, having at last discovered that Pellew could do no real mischief.

The Governor of Barcelona, therefore, had never more than 6,000 men at his disposition during the critical days of the campaign—June 11th-12th-13th-14th. He had, as has been mentioned above, reached Villafranca on the first-named day. There he received what had been longed for in vain up till now, a detailed dispatch from Suchet, setting forth his intentions. But it was no less than twelve days old, having been written at Valencia on May 31st, before the Marshal had any knowledge of Murray’s strength, objective, or intentions. It stated that he was intending to march via Tortosa, and that he hoped that Decaen with all his disposable field force would come down to meet him at Reus, unless indeed the Anglo-Sicilians were aiming at some more northern point, in which case he would have to follow them to Upper Catalonia. But he added that it was possible that the whole naval expedition might be a mere feint, intended to lure him northward beyond the Ebro; the fleet might turn back again and re-land the whole of Murray’s force near Valencia[688].

The dispatch was hopelessly out of date, and Maurice Mathieu had no means of knowing whether Suchet had carried out his original intentions. But his first impression was that he must seek for the Marshal at Reus, according to the directions given. Accordingly on June 12 he pushed his vanguard as far as Arbos, six miles in advance of Villafranca, and some 24 miles from Tarragona. But nothing could be heard of the Marshal’s approach, and Copons’ troops were gathering in from all sides to block the road, while Murray was only one march away. Seized with sudden misgivings at finding himself close to 20,000 enemies with such a trilling force, Mathieu made up his mind that it would be madness to push on. At 10 o’clock on the night of the 12th-13th[689] he evacuated both Arbos and Villafranca, and retreated in haste to Barcelona, to await the arrival of Decaen and the reserve.

Murray’s miserable timidity now intervened, to save Tarragona, just when both the French forces had found themselves foiled, and had given up the relief of the fortress as impossible. The story reads like the plot of a stupid theatrical farce, where every character does the wrong thing, in order to produce absurd complications in the situation. On the 12th Pannetier, on the hills above Monroig, heard no bombardment, because the bombardment had ceased. And Maurice Mathieu on the night of that same day was running away from an enemy who had already absconded that very afternoon. So, after coming within 35 miles of each other, the two French generals had turned back in despair and given up the game. But Murray had given it up also.

The bombardment had gone on very successfully throughout the 11th June, and the engineers reported at noon that the Fuerte Real could be stormed at any moment, and that the works of the Upper City were crumbling in many places. Orders were issued that Mackenzie’s division should storm the Fuerte Real at 10 p.m., while Clinton’s was to make a demonstration against the Upper City. All arrangements were made, and after dark the troops designated for the assault filed into the advanced trenches: the signal was to be by a flight of rockets[690]. But the rockets never went up.

For some days Murray had been in a state of agonized indecision. On the 9th he had received information from a trusted secret agent in Valencia that Suchet had marched for Tortosa on the 7th with 9,000 men—this was absolutely certain and showed that all the previous rumours from the South had been false. On the same day a dispatch came in from Eroles at Vich to say that a French column (Beurmann’s brigade) had left Gerona on the 8th, marching for Barcelona, and that he intended to follow it with his own detachment, and would join Copons before the enemy could concentrate. The French then were on the move on both flanks—but still far off. On the night of the 10th General Manso, commanding on Copons’ right flank, reported the approaching departure of Maurice Mathieu from Barcelona, but overrated his force at 10,000 men. He undertook to detain them in the defiles beyond Villafranca for at least one day. This news was corroborated next evening by an officer of Whittingham’s staff, who had seen the column, estimated it at 7,000 to 8,000 infantry, and reported that it had entered Villafranca at 4 p.m. on the 11th[691]. But it was the movements of Suchet which gave Murray the greater alarm: by ingenious miscalculations[692] he had arrived at the statistical conclusion that the Marshal had got 12,000 or 13,000 men of all arms with him, instead of the real 8,000[693]. And when the arrival of Pannetier’s brigade at Perello on the 10th was reported to him on the following day, he proceeded to assume that the French column was all closed up: ‘the Marshal with 13,000 men was within two long marches of Tarragona[694].’ Many generals would have asked for no better opportunity than that of being placed in a central position with some 23,000 men—the Anglo-Sicilian troops and those of Copons exceeded that figure—while two hostile columns, one of 13,000 men and the other of 10,000, 35 miles apart, were trying to join each other across a difficult country by bad roads. (As a matter of fact, of course, the French force was much smaller—no more than 8,000 men on the West, and 6,000 on the East, though Murray must not be too much blamed for the over-estimate.) But the two governing ideas that ruled in the brain of the unfortunate general were firstly the memory of Wellington’s warning that ‘the one thing that could not be forgiven would be that the corps should be beaten or dispersed’, and secondly the fact that his army was composed of heterogeneous material, some of which might be found wanting at a crisis. But he concealed his downheartedness till the last moment, both from his own lieutenants and from the Spaniards. On the 10th he rode out to meet General Copons at Torre dem Barra, to which place the Catalan head-quarters had just been moved, and agreed with him to defend the line of the Gaya river against the column coming from Barcelona. He promised to send up all his cavalry, 8,000 infantry, and two field batteries to join the Spanish army, which was now concentrated across the two roads by which Tarragona could be approached from Villafranca. Five battalions were on the northern road, by the Col de Santa Cristina, four and the three squadrons of horse on the southern route, nearer the sea. Warnings were issued to Clinton’s and Whittingham’s divisions, and also to Lord Frederick Bentinck, the cavalry brigadier, to be ready to march to the line of the Gaya[695]. This looked like business, and the spirits of the Anglo-Sicilians were high that night.

On the morning of the 11th, while the bombardment of Tarragona was going on in a very satisfactory way, Murray rode out again, met Copons at Vendrils, behind the Gaya, and spent much time in inspecting the chosen positions. He disliked them; the river was fordable in many places, and a very long front would have to be guarded: it was considered that the French might break through by one of the roads before the troops guarding the other could arrive. However, adhering to his promise of the 10th, Murray ordered up Bentinck with two squadrons of hussars and two guns to the mouth of the Gaya, where they took over the outposts on the coast-road. The infantry was not brought up—as the assault on Tarragona was to take place that evening. The only news from the front received in the afternoon were rumours that Maurice Mathieu had actually reached Villafranca[696].

At seven o’clock Murray started home, and reached his head-quarters before Tarragona two hours later. There he found a batch of reports awaiting him, which finally broke down his resolution to fight, and drove him to the ignominious flight which he had already contemplated on more than one day during the preceding week. Two Spanish officers had come in from the Col de Santa Cristina, to report that the Barcelona column had certainly occupied Villafranca, and was apparently pushing on beyond it: this was discouraging. But the document which Murray regarded as all-important was a note from his adjutant-general, Donkin, to the effect that peasants, who had just come in from Perello, reported that Suchet’s column had continued its advance: ‘This corps of infantry may be at Reus to-morrow, if they think proper to march by Perello without artillery. And Decaen (i. e. Mathieu), if he marched this day to Villafranca, can also reach Reus to-morrow. This possibility may, perhaps, make some change in your arrangements[697].’ As a matter of fact, we have already seen that it was only Pannetier’s brigade which had gone across the hills from Perello towards Monroig, and that this was a mere reconnaissance.

But Donkin’s picture of Suchet and the Barcelona column joining at Reus, in his rear, on the 12th, with forces which Murray’s imagination raised to 25,000 men, was so much in consonance with the fears which had been obsessing the brains of the Commander-in-Chief throughout the last ten days, that he felt that his nightmare was coming true. There could be no doubt that he was on the brink of a disaster like the Ostend catastrophe of 1798[698]. Of course Suchet’s active brain had planned his complete destruction. He tells us in his defence[699] that he asked himself whether it was probable that an officer of the Marshal’s activity and reputation would have left a man more than he could help in Valencia. ‘Was it the character of a French general to act with inadequate means when ample means were within his reach? Was it probable that he would have brought a small force only from the Xucar by the fatiguing march to Tortosa? Would he have left a man idle in the south when in danger of losing his communication with France? Every disposable corps, many more than what might be calculated to be fairly disposable, must be with the Marshal.’ He might have not 13,000 men but many more. And the Barcelona column might be not 10,000 men but 13,000.

Rather than take the risk of waiting one day longer in his present position, Murray resolved to abscond by sea, while the enemy was still twenty miles away from Tarragona. By 9.30 p.m. he had sent his staff officers with messages to his divisional generals to stop the projected assault, to order all guns, horses, and stores to be got on shipboard, and the infantry after them. He calculated, in his panic, that he had only eighteen hours in hand: the re-embarkation must be over by dusk on the 12th. But the most disgraceful part of his scheme was that he had resolved to leave Copons and the Catalans to their fate, after having brought them to the Gaya by definite promises of assistance, without which they would never have taken up their fighting position, and this though he had renewed his pledges that same morning. He sent no warning of his real intentions to his colleague, but only told him that recent information had made it necessary for him to re-embark his battering train; but six Anglo-Sicilian battalions should be sent out next morning, to strengthen the force behind the Gaya.

There followed a night and a morning of confusion. No one in the expeditionary force had hitherto suspected Murray’s wavering confidence, except Admiral Hallowell, to whom he had on June 9th made the remark that he imagined that they ought to be thinking about getting away in safety rather than about prolonging the siege, and the Quartermaster-General, Donkin, to whom on the same day Murray had said that he suspected that they would have ere long to depart, whereupon that officer had drawn up a secret scheme for the details of re-embarkation[700]. But since nothing more had been heard about such a move on the 10th or the 11th, Hallowell and Donkin had supposed that the idea was abandoned. Clinton and the other senior officers had been kept entirely in the dark, till the sudden orders of 9.30 p.m. were delivered to them. At midnight Admiral Hallowell came in to Murray’s quarters to protest against the hasty departure, which would cause all manner of confusion and ensure the loss of much valuable material: they parted after an angry altercation. Colonel Williamson (commanding the artillery) also appeared, to say that in the time given him he could get off the guns in the batteries near the shore, but not those on the distant Olivo. He understood the general to reply that he might be granted some extra hours, and that the Olivo guns might be brought down after dark on the 12th[701].

But in the morning Murray’s apprehension grew progressively worse. He had at first intended to do something to cover Copons’ inevitable retreat, and ordered Clinton to throw out six battalions towards the Gaya. But he soon cancelled this order, and directed Bentinck to bring back his cavalry and guns from Altafulla without delay. At 9 a.m. a message was sent to Williamson, to say that the guns on the Olivo must be spiked or destroyed, as it would be perilous to wait till night[702]. Half an hour later Murray’s notions of retreat flickered round to a new scheme—the troops on the shore should embark there; but those on the northern heights—the divisions of Clinton and Whittingham—should march to the Col de Balaguer via Constanti, and take ship in the much better harbourage behind Cape Salou. Half an hour later he abandoned this scheme, and ordered them down to the beach by the Francoli, there to embark without delay.

This dispatch reduced Clinton to a state of cold rage: at the court martial in 1814 he produced seven separate orders which he had received between dawn and 1.30 that day: they were all contradictory, and deserve record as showing Murray’s state of mind during the critical hours. (1) The first, received early, directed him to take six battalions towards the Gaya, to cover the retreat of Copons from Altafulla. (2) The second, sent off at 9 o’clock, told him not to execute this march, but to wait till the Spaniards had cleared off, and then to move, not with six battalions but with the whole of his own and Whittingham’s divisions, to Constanti[703]. (3) The third was to the effect that the baggage should be sent to the Col de Balaguer, to which the whole army would now proceed[704]. (4) Half an hour later Clinton was told to cancel the last two dispatches, and to come down to head-quarters on the nearest beach. (5) A supplementary verbal order directed that the guns in the Olivo batteries should be spiked. (6) Twenty minutes later Clinton was told that the guns might still be saved: Whittingham’s Spaniards should remain on the Olivo and guard them till dusk, when the artillery would try to get them down to the shore. (7) Lastly, at 1.30, the final order cancelled the sixth, it directed (once more) that Whittingham’s troops must follow Clinton’s for instant embarkation, and that the guns should be spiked without delay. This was done, to the intense disgust of the gunners, who had been getting everything ready for an orderly retreat after dusk. Seventeen heavy pieces in good condition, and one more which had been disabled, were spiked and left in the Olivo batteries, while the infantry hurried down to the shore.

The momentary wavering in Murray’s orders during the early morning, when he seemed inclined to risk a longer stay, and to march Clinton’s division and the baggage by land to the anchorage by the Col de Balaguer, was apparently caused partly by new remonstrances from Hallowell, partly by an interview with some of his subordinates, somewhere between 8 and 9 a.m., Mackenzie, Adam, Donkin, and Thackeray, the chief engineer, entered the house of the Commander-in-Chief together, and Adam, as their spokesman, urged him with great heat not to embark, but to advance, join Copons, and attack the French on the Gaya with every available man. Murray replied that if he did so, the French would refuse to fight and give back toward Barcelona; while Suchet, coming from the other direction, would cut him off from the fleet and relieve Tarragona. But if, on the other hand, he were to march against Suchet, and stop him, then the Barcelona column would relieve Tarragona and get the expeditionary force separated from its transports. Either course would be equally ruinous. He also said that Wellington had told him ‘not to commit the army’. The generals withdrew—further insistence would have amounted to military insubordination. The final hurry-scurry order, to destroy the guns and embark pell-mell, was caused by news from Copons that the French at Villafranca had advanced as far as Arbos, only ten miles from the Gaya, and seemed still to be coming on.

During the night and the morning that followed all the guns from the lower batteries, much valuable material, some of the cavalry, and the infantry of Adam, were got aboard. The shipment of artillery stores was still proceeding at 10 o’clock, when Murray ordered that nothing but men should now be embarked—all else must be abandoned. Admiral Hallowell, who was superintending the work on the beach in person, was much incensed with this resolve, and took it upon himself to direct the sailors in the boats to refuse infantry, and to go on lading stores. Then came a deadlock—Hallowell said that there was plenty of time to take off everything: Donkin, coming down from Murray’s quarters, maintained that the French were only two and a half hours’ march away, and that the infantry must be got off at all costs: horses and mules might have to be shot, and food and ammunition abandoned[705]. There was much disputing, but the naval men, obeying the admiral, continued to embark horses and artillery material till midday, when Mackenzie’s infantry began to pour down to the beaches, followed by Clinton’s and Whittingham’s battalions[706]. All through the afternoon the shipping off of troops continued without any interruption, till only a rearguard of 500 of Clinton’s men was left on shore. No news of the French coming to hand, there was a relaxation of the wild hurry which had prevailed between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Murray permitted Bentinck to take that part of the cavalry which had not yet embarked round to the anchorage by the Col de Balaguer by land[707], and sent on behind them twelve field-guns escorted by a half battalion of the 2/27th. Meanwhile, the troops having all got off, the boats began to load again with transport mules, entrenching tools, spare shot, platform timbers, sand bags, and biscuit. The rear guard was not taken off till late at night; and, even after it was gone and dawn had come, the sailors continued to find and take off various valuable leavings[708]. No molestation whatever was suffered from the garrison, who regarded the whole movement as inexplicable, and only crept out with caution after the last British troops had disappeared, to find 18 spiked guns and some artillery stores in the Olivo batteries, and a certain amount of flour and beef barrels left on the shore. The most distressing part of the chronicle of this wretched day’s work is Murray’s dealings with Copons. He had induced the Captain-General to bring his army to the line of the Gaya, by the promise of supporting him with 8,000 men, renewed on the morning of the 11th. At dawn on the 12th the message was sent that six battalions only could be spared. An hour or two later Copons received the crushing news that the whole expeditionary army was about to re-embark, abandoning him to his own resources. If Murray’s view of the situation had been correct, the Spaniards must have been caught between Suchet advancing on Reus and Mathieu converging on the same point from Villafranca. His moral guilt, therefore, was very great. But, as a matter of fact, nothing disastrous happened. On hearing that he had been left in the lurch, Copons withdrew the troops which he had at Altafulla on the coast-road, to join those at the Col de Santa Cristina, leaving the way to Tarragona open to Maurice Mathieu, and preparing to retreat into the mountains if necessary. He kept a close look-out upon the French column, and was astonished on the morning of the 13th to learn that, after sending a vanguard to Arbos on the previous day, six miles down the southern road, it had turned back at ten o’clock at night, and was now in full retreat on Barcelona. The crisis was over for the moment. Copons returned to his old head-quarters at Reus, threw out a slight screen of troops to the line of Gaya, and reoccupied Villafranca with a few cavalry. He was quite ready to retreat into the mountains once more if any untoward developments should supervene.

On June 13th Murray had all his army on shipboard,[709] save Prevost’s two battalions at the Col de Balaguer, and the guns and cavalry with Bentinck, which had marched by land to that same pass. Wellington’s orders told him that if he failed at Tarragona he was to return to Valencia, join Elio and Del Parque, and fall upon the diminished French force on the Xucar before Suchet could get back. It was his obvious duty to pick up Prevost’s and Bentinck’s detachments, and to depart at once. He did nothing of the kind, but proceeded to employ himself for several days in minor operations, in the vain hope of redeeming the disgrace of June 12th.

On the morning of the 13th Murray received news from Colonel Prevost at San Felipe to the effect that the French column in front of him (Pannetier’s brigade), about 3,000 strong, had marched from Perello by mountain paths eastward, but had not been followed by Suchet’s main body. Prevost thought that it might be intending to cut him off from the rest of the army by dropping down into the coast-road in his rear. Pannetier’s movement was also reported by Bentinck, whose flank patrols had run against similar parties of the French while on their way to the Col de Balaguer. It was necessary to bring off Prevost, the cavalry, and the guns by sea, if the French were trying to get round them. So Murray asked Admiral Hallowell to send ships in-shore to the Col, and with them part of Mackenzie’s division[710], to act as a covering force for the re-embarkation of Prevost’s detachment. These troops—apparently three battalions—were landed near the fort late on the evening of the 13th.

Now during that day Pannetier, conscious that he was too far away from his chief, and quite ‘in the air,’ had drawn back from near Monroig to Valdellos, ten miles nearer to Perello. The same idea had occurred to Suchet, who simultaneously brought up his main body from Tortosa to Perello, though he knew that the coast-road was blocked by the British force holding Fort San Felipe. But on the morning of the 14th the Marshal, exploring toward the Col, sighted not only Mackenzie’s infantry on shore, but the whole transport fleet lying off the coast from opposite the fort as far as Cape Salou—180 ships small and great, as he counted. A frigate and two brigs took a number of long shots at the Marshal and his large escort, which had to retire in haste. Suchet saw the whole expeditionary force before him, and recognized that he was too weak to tackle it. Wherefore he sent orders to Pannetier to fall back and rejoin him—and came to a halt. Early on the morning of the 15th he wrote to Decaen:

‘The loss of the Col de Balaguer has foiled all my plans. The English fleet fired more than a thousand shot at us. Menaced by forces of four times my own strength, I wish to know what you propose to do. The enemy [Del Parque] has attacked my lines on the Xucar[711].’

This last fact, at the moment, was worrying Suchet even more than the unknown fate of Tarragona, for Harispe had just reported that the two Spanish armies in Valencia had advanced against him in force, and on a long front. Now, while the Marshal halted in indecision, Murray was seized with a spasmodic fit of energy—he knew that Maurice Mathieu was for the moment out of the game; he saw that Suchet was blocked, and that Pannetier was in a dangerously advanced position. He conceived the idea that he might land more troops at the Col, and strike in between the French main body and the brigade at Valdellos. To the astonishment of his subordinates he ordered the rest of Mackenzie’s troops and all Clinton’s to be landed, as also the remainder of the cavalry, and instructed Mackenzie to make a forced march on Valdellos and beat up Pannetier’s camp. The General did so, but arrived only just in time to see the French rearguard absconding on the 15th[712]. This demonstration of energy having failed, as it was pretty certain to do (for events like the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos are not common), Murray had another inspiration. On the evening of the 15th[713] he suggested to Admiral Hallowell that the garrison of Tarragona must now be quite off their guard, that they had not been strengthened, and that it might be possible to re-embark 5,000 men secretly at Fort Balaguer, land them at Cambrils, and make a sudden dash at Tarragona by escalade or surprise. The Admiral answered that as Murray had not felt himself equal to storming Tarragona when the whole army was with him, and the batteries playing on the place, he (Hallowell) did not think him equal to it now with 5,000 men[714]. The idea was dropped: it was not without its merits, but though Picton or Craufurd might have succeeded in such a desperate stroke, Murray would certainly have failed from lack of nerve at the decisive moment, as the Admiral meant to insinuate.

This wretched campaign was now nearing its end—but still reserved two extraordinary surprises for its last days. On the 16th Suchet, much impressed with the strength which Murray had shown, judging from the stroke at Valdellos that he was thinking of taking the offensive, and harassed by fresh news of Del Parque’s advance on Valencia, retired from Perello, and took his main body back across the Ebro to Amposta, which he reached on the 17th. He left only Pannetier’s brigade and the hussar regiment to watch Murray. Thus the Anglo-Sicilians had opposite them on the south only 3,000 men, from whom no possible danger could be apprehended. But their General had no idea as yet that only a rearguard lay before him, and imagined that the Marshal and his main body were close in Pannetier’s rear.

The second surprise took place on the other front. Maurice Mathieu had got back to Barcelona by a forced march on the 13th. On the next day spies brought him the news that Murray had raised the siege of Tarragona, and gone away with his whole army by sea. There was nothing to prevent him from relieving Bertoletti’s garrison, save Copons’ troops holding the line of the Gaya. Therefore, although Decaen had not yet arrived from the North, and indeed had written that he could not start from Gerona until the 17th, Mathieu resolved to make a second attempt to reach Tarragona. He could still count on no greater force than the 6,000 men with which he had made his first fruitless expedition, but he thought this sufficient to deal with the Catalans. He moved once more upon Villafranca early on the 15th, and reached that place the same night. Next day a forced march of twenty-four miles brought him to Tarragona unopposed; for Copons would not fight when unsupported by Murray, and had withdrawn his troops to Valls. At Tarragona Mathieu learned that the Anglo-Sicilians had not disappeared entirely from Catalonia, as he had hitherto believed, but were concentrated at and about the Col de Balaguer. Though no news had been received from Suchet, it might be conjectured that Murray had landed at the Col in order to hold back the Marshal, who could not be very far off. On the morning of the 17th Mathieu resolved to take the risky step of advancing by the coast-road to feel for Murray’s rear, and marched out to Cambrils six miles west of Tarragona, hoping to hear that Suchet was simultaneously attacking the front of the Anglo-Sicilians. He was thereby exposing himself to fearful danger, for Murray had his whole 15,000 men in hand, and quite disposable, since Suchet had withdrawn southward on the 16th. And Copons at Valls was in a position to cut in upon the rear of the Barcelona column with 6,000 men more: each of them was only ten miles from Cambrils, and they were in full communication with each other. Indeed, Murray had sent to Copons late on the 16th, imploring him to fall upon the flank of the enemy, though he spoilt the effect of the appeal by explaining that he was going to be attacked by Suchet and the Barcelona column simultaneously, and expected to be outnumbered—the Marshal had 24,000 men (!), while 8,000 men were coming via Tarragona against his rear. Startled by these astounding figures, the Spanish General did not actually attack Maurice Mathieu, but contented himself with bringing forward his infantry to La Selva and feeling for the French column by cavalry patrols sent out from Reus.

The 17th June was a day as full of ridiculous cross-purposes as the 12th. Suchet’s main body was in full march for Amposta and the road to Valencia[715], just as Maurice Mathieu was at last coming to look for it. Murray in the centre was expecting to be attacked on both sides of the Col de Balaguer, believing that the reckless advance of the Barcelona column was timed to coincide with a desperate assault on the Col by Suchet and his whole army. Mathieu was advancing in ignorance into a death-trap, if he had only known it, expecting every moment to hear guns in his front, or to get news of Suchet by spies or patrols. Copons was hanging back on Mathieu’s flank, deterred from pressing in by Murray’s ridiculous overstatement of the total French force. If Murray had marched from the Col that morning early with 10,000 men and had met the French column at Cambrils, while the Catalans closed in on its rear, no possible chance could have saved it from complete destruction.

But Murray was doing something very different; after having made his urgent appeal to Copons to take part in a general action on the 17th, it occurred to him that a general action might perhaps be avoided by the simple method of absconding once more by sea—and again leaving the Catalans to shift for themselves. Mackenzie was back from Valdellos, and the whole force was concentrated in the pass, with the immense transport fleet at its elbow, and several decent embarkation places. In the morning he called a council of war—which, as the old military proverb goes, ‘never fights’—though he had assured Admiral Hallowell on the preceding night that he had chosen his positions, and intended to stand and receive the enemy’s attack[716]. The council of war voted, by a large majority, for embarkation—probably as has been acutely observed[717], because none of the generals liked the idea of being commanded in action by Murray, after their recent experience of his methods. The preparations for departure were begun on the afternoon of the 17th, but no notice of them was sent to Copons.

Meanwhile Maurice Mathieu had halted at Cambrils: he could get no news of Suchet, and no firing could be heard in front. On the other hand, British warships ran close in-shore, and began to cannonade his column, as it defiled along the coast-road. And his cavalry patrols discovered those of Copons in front of Reus, and afterwards got in touch with the Spanish infantry behind them. The situation was getting unpleasant; and realizing that he had better draw back, Mathieu turned the head of his column inland to Reus, for he was determined not to expose it a second time to the fire of the British ships, which swept the coast-road at many points. Marching in the night of the 17th-18th he almost surprised Copons, who had brought his infantry up to Reus in order to fall in with Murray’s plan for attacking the enemy in flank. But the Spaniard was warned in time, and escaped to La Selva, from whence he wrote to Murray, to complain that the British had not kept their part of the bargain, nor even sent him news of Mathieu’s retirement from their front.

At Reus the French General picked up the spy to whom Suchet had entrusted his despairing note of June 15, which avowed his impotence and asked what the Army of Catalonia could do[718]. Seeing that he must hope for no help from the Marshal, Mathieu retreated by the inland road to Constanti, two miles from Tarragona (June 18), where he halted for a day, after sending on Suchet’s letter to his chief Decaen, and renewing his former petitions that the reserves from the North should get to Barcelona as soon as possible. It was clear that the Army of Catalonia must save itself, without any aid from the Army of Valencia.

While Maurice Mathieu stood doubting at Cambrils, and all through the night hours while he was marching on Reus, there had been a rapid shifting of scenes at the Col de Balaguer. Murray’s orders for re-embarkation were just drawn up when a formidable fleet of men-of-war became visible on the horizon, and presently ran close in-shore. This was Sir Edward Pellew with the Toulon blockading squadron, twelve line of battle ships, besides smaller craft. They had run down from the Bay of Rosas, after picking up at Port Mahon a vessel from Sicily, on which was Lord William Bentinck, who had at last arrived to assume command of the Anglo-Sicilian army. He had torn himself away with some reluctance from his plans for raising a general insurrection in Italy against Napoleon, having satisfied himself that there was no risk of Murat’s invading Sicily in his absence, and that the local politics of Palermo were deplorable but not dangerous[719]. When the signal was made from Pellew’s flagship that Lord William had arrived, Admiral Hallowell answered with the counter-signal, ‘We are all delighted,’ which was sincere and accurate, but not officially correct. It was remembered against him afterwards, as an improper ebullition of misplaced humour.

Bentinck landed at San Felipe without a moment’s delay, took over the command from Murray, and heard his report. He also talked with Hallowell and the senior land-officers. He made up his mind very promptly: the embarkation which had begun was to continue, and the Army was to be taken back to Valencia at once, in strict consonance with Wellington’s original orders. He explained in his next dispatch home that he was aware that he might have chased Maurice Mathieu, and probably have compelled him to throw himself into Tarragona. But he conceived that a second siege of that fortress would take many days, and would not be so profitable to the general cause as an unexpected return to Valencia to join Del Parque and Elio. The Army, as he wrote to Wellington, was in the best spirits, but most dissatisfied as to what had happened before Tarragona, ‘concerning which, from motives of delicacy, he would refrain from saying anything[720].’ But there had been much material lost, the horses and mules were in a bad way, from having been so often landed and reshipped, and it was better to return to Alicante and reorganize everything than to start another Catalan campaign.

The troops were got on board very rapidly, and the whole transport fleet set sail southward on the 18th. The fort of San Felipe was blown up, as Bentinck was not willing to leave any troops behind to garrison it. Unfortunately, the good weather which had been granted to Murray at the starting of the expedition was denied to Bentinck during its return. A furious north-east wind was blowing, which scattered the ships, and drove no less than fourteen of them ashore on the projecting sands at the estuary of the Ebro. Ten were got off when the storm moderated, but four had to be burned, after the crews and troops had been taken off. Bentinck, after four days at sea, got into Alicante on the 22nd June, ahead of the great majority of the transports, which continued to drop in, some much disabled, for three or four days after. This caused a tiresome delay in the reorganization of the army, as odd companies of every regiment were missing, and the units could not be re-formed and marched inland for some time. The delay gave Bentinck time to write long dispatches to the Secretary for War and to Wellington. These went off on the 23rd by special messenger, and along with them lengthy screeds from Murray and Admiral Hallowell. The two officers wrote most bitterly of each other to the Commander-in-Chief—the Admiral detailing all the General’s hesitations and tergiversations with caustic irony, while the General wrote that ‘if I had only allowed the Admiral to command the army you would never have been troubled with the long letter which accompanies this.... He thinks that prejudice against him led me to act as I did. These are the real grounds of all his outcry[721].’ Murray’s long dispatch was not only very disingenuous in suppression of facts, but so vague concerning all necessary dates and figures, that Wellington, when it came to hand, showed profound dissatisfaction. He observed that it ‘left him entirely ignorant of what had occurred,’ and administered a searching interrogatory of eleven questions, answers to which were necessary before a judgement could be formed by himself or the Home Government on what had really happened in Catalonia[722]. Murray’s replies were as unconvincing as his original dispatches, and the matter ended in a long-deferred and lengthy court martial at Winchester in 1814, after the war had come to an end. To describe it here would interrupt unseasonably the narrative of the summer campaign of 1813. But it may suffice to say that he did not get his deserts. He was only convicted of an error of judgement, and not of the ‘disobedience to orders and neglect of duty, highly to the prejudice of the service, and detrimental to the British military character’ for which he was put on trial. He was never even indicted for his worst offence—the callous betrayal of the Spanish colleague who had done his best to serve him.

SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER IV

WELLINGTON ON THE BIDASSOA

On July 1st the last of Foy’s troops on the sea-coast front had recrossed the lower Bidassoa, leaving Graham and Giron in complete possession of the Spanish bank, and free to commence the siege of St. Sebastian. They had 25,000 men in line, without counting Mendizabal’s Biscayan irregulars, who were observing the fortress, and the 5th British Division, which was now on its march from Vittoria to the frontier, and was due to arrive on the 5th or 6th. These forces were amply sufficient to hold in check Reille, Foy, and the Bayonne Reserve.

On July 1st also Wellington began to arrange his march northward from Pampeluna, which might have begun on the 26th June if he had not taken off so many divisions for the fruitless pursuit of Clausel. The five days’ respite granted to the enemy had been very useful to him. If the King had been followed up without delay, at the moment when he had split his army into the three columns, which marched the first by Yrurzun and Santesteban (Reille), the second by the Col de Velate (D’Erlon), and the third by the Pass of Roncesvalles (Gazan), it is hard to say where or how he could have rallied or offered any effective resistance. Wellington had preferred to take the doubtful chance of intercepting and destroying a secondary force, rather than to devote himself to the relentless pursuit of the demoralized main body of the enemy. But it must be remembered that a resolve to push the chase after the flying King would have involved an instant invasion of France. And though on general military grounds a defeated enemy should be kept on the run and destroyed in detail—like Brunswick’s army after Jena—there were in June-July 1813 the strongest political reasons to deter Wellington from crossing the frontier. It was not merely that he had outmarched his transport, and had not yet got into touch with his new bases of supply at Santander and on the Biscay coast, so that for the moment he was a little short of ammunition, and also living on the country, a practice which he disliked on principle and wished to end as soon as possible[723]. Nor was his hindrance the fact that his army was tired and sulky, and that many of his stragglers had not yet rejoined—though both of these vexations had their weight[724]. Nor was the political consideration that held him back the deplorable news from Cadiz, received at Caseda on June 28th, to the effect that the Regency had deposed Castaños from his office as Captain-General of Galicia, Estremadura, and both the Castiles, and had superseded his nephew General Giron in the command of the Fourth Army[725]. This was indeed a serious blow—not so much because Wellington could always rely on Castaños, and had found Giron more obedient than most Spanish officers, but because it looked as if the Cadiz Government was aiming at an open repudiation of the bargain that had been made in January, by which they had agreed not to make or revoke appointments of the military sort without giving notice, and receiving approval. The excuses given for the changes were paltry and unconvincing—Castaños was wanted to take his seat in the Council of State—Giron was to be sent, with large reinforcements, to serve with Copons as second in command of the Army of Catalonia. Wellington concluded, and rightly, that the real causes of these attacks on his friends were petty political intrigues—the ‘Liberal’ party in Cadiz was trying to secure its own domination by evicting those who might be considered ‘Serviles’ or even ‘Moderates’ from positions of power[726]. He had resolved not to bring the relations between himself and the Regency to a crisis, by making a formal demand for the restoration of Castaños and Giron to their posts. He wrote indeed to the Minister of War to say that he considered that he had been ‘most unworthily treated’ and that there were limits to his forbearance, but he avoided an open rupture, and waited for the Regency to take the next step. He wrote, however, to his brother, the Ambassador at Cadiz, that he ought to call together in private all the more sensible and sound members of the Cortes, and to warn them of the pernicious effects of this last move: unless they wished to see him resign the position of Generalissimo, given him only six months back, they must bring pressure on their government—‘they have it in their power to interfere if they still wish that I should retain the command[727].’

But this political trouble, ominous though it might be of friction in the near future, was not the cause of Wellington’s failure to exploit to the utmost the effects of the battle of Vittoria. The real hindrance was not the state of Spanish politics, but the posture of affairs in Central Europe. The Armistice of Plässwitz had been signed on June 4, and till it came to an end on August 11 there was a possibility of peace between Napoleon and his Russian and Prussian enemies, on terms which Great Britain would be unable to accept. Wellington was sent frequent dispatches by Lord Bathurst, to keep him abreast of the latest developments in the Conferences, but inevitably it took a very long time for news from Saxony to reach London and be transmitted to Spain. Now if Napoleon should succeed in making a separate peace with the Allies, his first care would be to evict the British Army, if it should have entered France in successful pursuit of King Joseph and his demoralized host. Even if it should have taken Bayonne, crushed the enemy’s field force, and made good way towards Bordeaux, it would have no chance of standing against the enormous reserves that could be drawn from Germany, with the Emperor himself at their head. Therefore it would be better to take up a good position on the line of the Pyrenees, secured by capturing St. Sebastian and Pampeluna, than to make an irruption into France, however brilliant the immediate results of such a move might be. Still ignorant on July 12 of the tendency of the conferences at Dresden, Wellington wrote to the Secretary for War: ‘My future operations will depend a good deal upon what passes in the North of Europe: and if operations should recommence there, on the strength and description of the reinforcement which the enemy may get on our front.... I think I can hold the Pyrenees as easily as I can Portugal. I am quite certain that I can hold the position which I have got more easily than the Ebro, or any other line in Spain[728].’ In another letter he explains that he is giving his army a few days of much needed rest, by the end of which he hopes not only to have heard of the fall of St. Sebastian, but of the results of the negotiations in Germany[729]. In a third he puts the matter in the clearest terms: ‘Much depends upon the state of affairs in the North of Europe. If the war should be renewed, I should do most good by moving forward into France, and I should probably be able to establish myself there. If it is not renewed, I should only go into France to be driven out again. So I shall do my best to confine myself to securing what I have gained[730].’ In a fourth he complains that many people, even officers at the front, seem to think that after driving the French from the frontiers of Portugal to the Pyrenees, he ought to invade France immediately. ‘Some expect that we shall be at Paris in a month.’ But though he entertained no doubt that he could enter France to-morrow, and establish the Army on the Adour, he could go no farther. For if peace were made by the Allies, he must necessarily withdraw into Spain, and the retreat, though short, would be through a difficult country and a hostile population. So from what he could gather about the progress of negotiations in Germany, he had determined that it would be unsafe to think of anything in the way of an invasion of France[731].

Everything therefore at present, and for many weeks to follow, depended on the news concerning the Armistice. And the happy intelligence that it had come to an end, and that the war was renewed, with the Austrians added to the Allied forces, only reached Wellington on September 7th. The actual declaration of war by Austria took place on August 11, by which time the situation on the Spanish frontier had suffered many vicissitudes, for in the last fortnight during which the Armistice endured, there had taken place Soult’s desperate invasion of Spain, and all the bloody fighting known as the Battles of the Pyrenees.

Meanwhile we must return to July 1st, on which day Wellington had already made up his mind that his present programme should be confined to bringing up his army to the Bidassoa and the Pyrenean passes, and undertaking the siege of St. Sebastian and the blockade of Pampeluna. He was still not quite happy about the intentions of Clausel—he trusted that the French General and his 15,000 men would retire to France by the pass above Jaca[732]. If he were to remain at Saragossa, and Suchet were there to join him, a tiresome complication would be created on his right rear—wherefore he kept sending letters to William Bentinck, ordering him to keep Suchet busy at all costs, by whatever means might seem best to him[733]. It was not till July 16th that news came that this danger had ended in the desired fashion, by Clausel’s crossing the passes[734]. But whatever might happen in that direction, there was still one point that had to be settled, before it could be considered that the allied army was established on a satisfactory line for defending the Spanish frontier and covering the sieges of St. Sebastian and Pampeluna. The French were still in possession of the Bastan, the high-lying valley of the Upper Bidassoa, through which runs the main road from Pampeluna to Bayonne, by the Col de Velate, and the pass of Maya. This last corner of Spain must be cleared of the invaders, or the crest of the Pyrenees was not yet secure. Accordingly arrangements were made for marching the main body of the British Army to its destined positions through the Bastan, in order to sweep out the lingering enemy.

A sufficient corps must be left to blockade Pampeluna: during the operations against Clausel this duty had been discharged by Hill’s and Silveira’s and Morillo’s troops. As these units had enjoyed five days’ rest, while the remainder of the divisions had been marching hard in eastern Navarre, it was arranged that they should give over the service of the blockade by sections to the returning columns as each came up. Wellington intended to transfer the whole affair in the end to a Spanish force, the ‘Army of Reserve of Andalusia’ under Henry O’Donnell, which had been occupied for the last week in the siege of the forts of Pancorbo, after its very tardy arrival in the zone of operations. King Joseph, when lying at Burgos, had thrown a garrison of 700 men into these forts, which command the high road to the Ebro, in the vain hope of incommoding Wellington’s advance. But as the allied army did not march by the Camino Real at all, but cut across by side routes to Medina del Pomar, the precaution was useless, and cost the enemy a battalion. However, it was necessary to clear the defile, in order to open the easiest line of communication with Madrid, and O’Donnell was directed to capture the forts on his way north to join the main army. He invested them on June 25, and stormed the lower and weaker fort of Santa Marta on the 28th. The upper fort of Santa Engracia was a veritable eagle’s nest, on a most inaccessible position: O’Donnell succeeded with great difficulty in getting six guns up to a point on which they could bear on the work. But the reason why such a strong post surrendered by capitulation two days later was not the artillery fire, but mainly lack of water, the castle well having run nearly dry, and partly the news of Vittoria. A small party of fugitives who had escaped from the field by an incredible détour, corroborated the claims made by the Spanish general when he summoned the place, and the commandant (Major Durand of the 55th Line) surrendered with 650 men, 24 guns, and a good stock of ammunition on June 30th[735].

On getting these news Wellington, on July 2, ordered O’Donnell to come up at once, and take over the blockade of Pampeluna, for which his whole force of 11,000 men would not be too great. For the fortress was large and strongly garrisoned. The King had brought up the number of troops left to the Governor-General Cassan[736] to 3,600 men before leaving the place, and there were over eighty guns mounted on the walls, though two outlying forts in the plain had been abandoned. Wellington allowed nine days for the orders to reach O’Donnell, and for the Army of Reserve to make the long march from Pancorbo to Pampeluna: as a matter of fact it took eleven. Meanwhile the fortress had to be contained by troops from the main army, till the Andalusians should come up—they were due on July 12th. The scheme adopted was that Hill should collect the 2nd Division and Silveira’s Portuguese[737]—their usual contingent of auxiliaries—on the north side of Pampeluna on July 1st, and march on July 2; the ground which he had held being taken over by the Light 3rd and 7th Divisions, returning from the chase of Clausel. On the 3rd the 7th Division was to be relieved by the 4th, and to follow Hill. On the 5th the 6th Division (Clinton) would arrive, and relieve the Light Division which would follow the 7th. The greater part of the cavalry was to be left behind in the plains, being obviously useless in the Pyrenees except in small parties for exploration; but each of the marching divisions had a regiment attached to it.

The result of these arrangements was to leave three divisions (3rd, 4th, 6th), and nearly all the cavalry, for the blockade of Pampeluna—a rather larger force than might have been expected[738]. Four divisions (2nd, Light, 7th, and Silveira’s Portuguese) moved out to clear the Bastan, and to establish communications with Graham’s corps on the Lower Bidassoa. If the French had been in good fighting trim, four divisions would have been none too many for the task, more especially when it is remembered that they were advancing in three échelons, each separated from the next by a long day’s march. But Wellington reckoned that, although he had all Gazan’s and D’Erlon’s troops in front of him—the presence of Reille’s on the Lower Bidassoa had been reported by Graham—they would have no artillery (since it had been lost at Vittoria), would be low in numbers, because they had not yet gathered in their stragglers, and lower still in morale. His estimate was on the whole justified, for the operation was successfully carried out; but it did not go off quite so easily as had been expected. It should be mentioned that, on the bare chance that the French might make a movement from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port to disturb the blockade of Pampeluna—an unlikely possibility—the 2nd Division had detached Byng’s brigade to hold the pass of Roncesvalles, in conjunction with Morillo’s Spanish division. Hill therefore, leading the march towards the Bastan, had only three of his four brigades with him—Cameron’s[739], O’Callaghan’s[740], and Ashworth’s Portuguese. The total of the marching column, from front to rear, was about 22,000 men.

To understand the task set before Hill’s corps it is necessary to go back to the arrangements—if arrangements they can be called, for they were largely involuntary—made by the French Head-quarters Staff during the preceding week. After Reille’s divisions had turned off towards the Bidassoa, and D’Erlon’s had retreated into the Bastan, the main body of the French Army—the four and a half infantry divisions of the Army of the South, with its own cavalry and the bulk of that of the Army of Portugal[741]—had taken the route of the Pass of Roncesvalles, and reached St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, in a state of complete confusion (June 27), preceded by a vanguard of marauders several thousands strong, who swept the countryside of cattle and corn just as freely after they had reached France as while they were still in Navarre. Behind the troops who had kept to their eagles followed a rearguard of footsore stragglers and slightly wounded men, harassed till they came to the frontier by bands of local guerrilleros. The whole mass was in a state of demoralization: the French peasantry had to flee to the hills with what they could carry—every house was plundered save those in which a general or other officer of high rank had quartered himself[742]. St. Jean-Pied-du-Port was a small third-class fortress, garrisoned by a battalion of National Guards, not an arsenal or a dépôt. It was impossible to reorganize an army there, or even to feed it for a few days. The Army of the South rolled back on June 29th to the valleys of the Nivelle and Nive, so as to be near the great magazines of Bayonne, which had always been the base from which the French forces in Spain were supplied. There alone would it be possible to re-form it, and to re-equip it with all the guns and transport necessary to replace the losses of Vittoria. Gazan left one division—that of Conroux—at St. Jean, to block the pass of Roncesvalles: with the other three and a half divisions he arrived on July 1st at Ustaritz, St. Pée and Espelette in the valleys of the Nive and Nivelle, only twelve or fifteen miles from Bayonne. The cavalry was sent back still farther to the line of the Adour.

Soon after this there was a great reduction made in the mounted arm. Orders arrived from Germany that only the cavalry of the Army of the South was to remain on the frontier. Boyer’s dragoons of the Army of Portugal, Treillard’s dragoons of the Army of the Centre, and seven light cavalry regiments of the Armies of Portugal and the North were to start off at once[743]. Napoleon in his Saxon campaign had been suffering bitterly from a want of good cavalry, and had directed the King to send these veteran regiments across France with all speed, whatever might be the state of affairs in Spain.

It is quite clear that if Wellington had chosen, on June 26th, to follow Gazan across the Pyrenees, instead of turning aside to chase Clausel, he could have done anything that he pleased with the enemy. But this, for the reasons that we have detailed above—was not his game for the moment. Hence the shattered Army of Spain had a few days in which to commence reorganization. The easiest thing was the replacement of the 151 cannon lost at Vittoria. Bayonne was a great artillery storehouse, and the French gunners had brought away their teams, if they had left all their pieces behind them. On July 6th General Tirlet, the officer commanding the artillery of the united armies, could report to the King that he had already served out 80 guns—33 each to the Armies of Gazan and Reille, 10 to the Army of the Centre, and 4 to the mobile division of the Bayonne Reserve. By the end of the month he promised to have 120 or even 150 pieces ready, which would give every division its battery, as well as a good reserve. And these pledges were fulfilled—with help from the arsenals of Toulouse, Blaye, and La Rochelle. But the supply of caissons was for some time very low, and the wheeled transport for the train was much more difficult to procure, requisitions on the Pyrenean departments being difficult to enforce, and slow to collect. As to food supply, the main difficulty was that although there was a considerable accumulation of stores at Bayonne, no one had ever contemplated the chance that 60,000 starving men would be thrown on the resources of the dépôt in one mass. Much flour was there, but not enough ovens to bake it, or wagons to carry it to the troops lying fifteen or twenty miles out, on the Bidassoa or the Nive. And these troops had lost all their own carts and fourgons. Even as much as a month later the army, reorganized in other respects, had not got enough transport to carry more than a few days’ food, as Marshal Soult was to find.

King Joseph had left Pampeluna long before his troops, and taking a short cut had reached St. Jean de Luz on June 28th, and set up his last head-quarters there. He was painfully aware of the fact that his great brother would in all probability visit upon his head all his inevitable wrath for the results of the late campaign; but to the final moment of his command he strove to exercise his authority, and busied himself with the details of projected operations. He was at this moment somewhat estranged from Marshal Jourdan, who had taken to his bed, and kept complaining that the generals would neither give him information nor take his orders, but confined themselves to making ill-natured comments on the battle of Vittoria. The King, instead of relying on his advice, asked council on all sides, and hovered between many opinions.

It is a sufficient proof of the incoherence of both Jourdan’s and Joseph’s military ideas, that at this moment they were thinking seriously of resuming the offensive and re-entering Spain. When he received Clausel’s dispatches announcing his safe arrival at Saragossa, and the possibility of his junction with Suchet, the King was fascinated for the moment with the idea of bringing Wellington to a stand, by attacking his flank and rear in Aragon. This could only be done by sending large reinforcements to Clausel, and so weakening the main army. The real objection to this plan was that the troops were in no condition to march, or indeed to fight, till they should have had time for rest and reorganization. Jourdan, however, drew up on July 5—the very day on which Wellington was beginning to drive Gazan out of the Bastan—as we shall presently see—a memoir for the King’s consideration, which laid out three possible policies. One was to advance with every unit that could move, against Graham, who was wrongly supposed to have only one British division with him. The second was to march to relieve Pampeluna by Roncesvalles, after first calling in Clausel to help. The third was to accept the idea which lay at the base of Clausel’s last dispatch, to leave 15,000 men on the Bidassoa to detain Graham, and to move the rest of the army by the Jaca passes into Aragon. It was conceded that artillery could not go that way, and that Clausel had none with him—but some guns might be picked up at Saragossa and from Suchet, and a very large body of troops would be placed on Wellington’s flank. It is difficult to say which of the three schemes was more impracticable for the moment, as a policy for the starving and demoralized Army of Spain.

A more serious project, and one for which there would have been much to say, if the French Army had been at this moment in a condition to feed itself, or to manœuvre, or to commit itself to an action which would involve the expenditure of more ammunition than the infantry could carry in their pouches, was one for strengthening the front in the Bastan. While this long valley was still retained, direct communication between Wellington’s main body about Pampeluna and the large detachment under Graham on the Bidassoa was blocked. But the Bastan was occupied by the weakest section of the French forces, D’Erlon’s Army of the Centre, one of whose infantry divisions (Darmagnac’s) had been ruined at the battle of Vittoria, where it lost more men in proportion to its strength than any other unit[744], while another—Casapalacios’ Spanish division—was disappearing rapidly by desertion. There were only left, in a condition to fight, the Royal Guards—a little over 2,000 men—and Cassagne’s division, which had suffered no serious casualties in the recent campaign. Clearly the Bastan and the numerous passes which descend into it could not be held by 10,000 infantry, some of them in very bad order, even though they might get some guns from the Bayonne arsenal. Wherefore Joseph ordered D’Erlon to make over the defence of the Bastan to the Army of the South, and to fall back to the line of the Nivelle, where he should join Reille. Gazan was directed to take over charge of this important salient, with the whole of his army, save Conroux’s division left at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port[745] (July 3).

Gazan, who had only reached the Nive two days before, whose troops had not yet recovered from the starvation which they had suffered in the march from Pampeluna to Ustaritz and Espelette, who had lost his transport, and who had not yet received the 33 guns which had been sent him from Bayonne (though he was told that they were just coming up), made objections very rational in themselves to these orders. He said that his troops must have food and guns, or they could not be expected to maintain their positions. He also remarked that it was exasperating that he had not been told to march straight from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port to the Bastan by the direct pass at Ispegui, instead of being brought back two days’ march to the Nive, and then sent south again to the Maya pass, only twelve miles from his starting-point[746].

Gazan started out, unwillingly and with many protests, from his cantonments on the Nive on the morning of July 3, sending one of his divisions, Leval’s, by the inferior mountain road from Sarre on the Nivelle to Etchalar and Santesteban in the western Bastan, the rest by the Maya pass to Elizondo, the chief road-centre in the eastern or upper Bastan. From these points they were to spread themselves out, and take over all the passes south and west from D’Erlon’s troops. The commander of the Army of the Centre began to clear out his reserves northwards, and to arrange for the rapid departure of each advanced section, as it should be relieved by the arrival of Gazan’s divisions. He met his colleague on the way, handed over the charge to him, and then rode down to make his report to Jourdan at St. Pée (July 5), where he dropped the cheering remark that if the Army of the South did not receive very heavy convoys of food at once, it would go to pieces of its own accord and quit the Bastan within a few days, as his own army had eaten up the valley and no troops could live there[747].

Darmagnac’s division and the Royal Guard had been relieved by Leval, while Cassagne’s first brigade was marching north by Elizondo, though his second was still blocking the Col de Velate till Gazan’s troops should arrive, when Wellington’s attack was delivered—at the most opportune of moments. Nothing could have been better for him than that the enemy should have been caught in the middle of an uncompleted exchange of troops, before the incoming army had gained any knowledge of the ground. Moreover, though Gazan had double as many men with him as D’Erlon, they had not enjoyed the comparative rest which the Army of the Centre had gained since June 26th, but had been countermarching all the time, and were in a very dilapidated condition. Otherwise there would have been much greater difficulty in driving them out of the Bastan with the very moderate force that Wellington actually used. For he was able to finish the business with four brigades—the three of the 2nd Division and one of Silveira’s—which formed the head of his column. Of the rear échelons, the 7th Division, which started from Pampeluna on the 4th, got up only in time to see the very end of the game, and the Light Division were never engaged at all.

At noon on July 4th Cameron’s Brigade[748], forming the advanced guard of the 2nd Division, crossed the highest point of the Col de Velate, and ran into half a battalion of the 16th Léger. This was the rearguard of Braun’s brigade of Cassagne’s division, which was holding the village of Berrueta, a few miles down the northern slope of the pass, waiting till it should be relieved by Maransin’s division from Gazan’s army. This detachment was evicted from Berrueta and Aniz, and fell back on Ziga, where the other battalion of its regiment was in position. That village also was cleared, but Hill’s leading brigade then found itself in front of Maransin’s division marching rapidly up the road, with other troops visible in a long column behind. Hill, seeing that he was about to be involved in a serious fight with heavy numbers, began to deploy the rear brigades of the 2nd Division behind the ravine in front of Aniz, as each came up, abandoning the recently taken Ziga. The French, in the same fashion, gradually formed a long line on their side of the ravine, extending it eastward from the village and showing two brigades in front line and two in reserve on the heights of Irurita some way behind.

Hill appears to have felt the French front in several places, but to have desisted on discovering its strength. Skirmishing of a bloodless sort went on all the afternoon, each side waiting for its reserves to come up. Before dusk Gazan had drawn in all Villatte’s division, which had reached Santesteban earlier in the day, and the non-divisional brigade of Gruardet, so that by night he had two complete divisions and two extra brigades concentrated—at least 13,000 men[749]. Behind Hill there was only Da Costa’s brigade of Silveira’s division, which was a full march to the rear: for Wellington had ordered A. Campbell’s brigade—the other half of the Portuguese division—to take a different route, that up the Arga river by Zubiri to Eugui, which goes by a bad pass (Col de Urtiaga) into the French valley of the Alduides.

Hill’s position was a distinctly unpleasant one, since he had only three brigades up in line, with another out of any reasonable supporting distance, if the enemy should think fit to press in upon him. The 7th Division was two marches away, while the Light Division was still before Pampeluna; both were altogether out of reach. Owing to heavy losses at Vittoria, the three second division brigades can hardly have numbered 6,000 bayonets[750]. Their commander very wisely waited for the arrival of Wellington from the rear. Head-quarters that day had been at Lanz, on the road from Pampeluna to the Col de Velate.

The Commander-in-Chief came up at about midday on the 5th, following in the wake of Da Costa’s Portuguese, who were bringing up with them two batteries of artillery—the first guns that either side had shown in the Bastan. After looking at the French positions Wellington resolved to push on—this was a purely psychological resolve, for his numbers did not justify any such a move; he relied on his estimate of the morale of Gazan, and that estimate turned out to be perfectly correct.

Hill’s operations, till Wellington took over charge of the field, had been limited to cautious reconnaissances of the enemy’s flanks. But with the change in command decisive action began: Cameron’s brigade was sent out by the steep hillsides on the right to turn Gazan’s left flank; O’Callaghan’s, with Ashworth’s Portuguese in support, crossed the ravine in front of Aniz, and deployed on each side of the road to attack his centre. If Gazan had stood to fight, and brought up all his reserves, it is hard to see how he could have been moved: indeed he ought to have scored a big success if he had dared to counter-attack—for Wellington had no reserves save Da Costa’s Portuguese brigade. But, like Murray at Tarragona, the French general had been making himself dreadful pictures of the strength that might conceivably be in front of him. Three prisoners taken at Ziga on the preceding day had told him that they belonged to Hill’s corps—he presumed it complete in front of him, with all its six brigades, instead of the actual three. Then a heavy column had come up at noon—Da Costa’s brigade—Gazan judged it to be some fresh division from Pampeluna. In addition he had received a cry of alarm from Conroux at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port—that officer reported that on July 4 a Spanish corps was threatening his flank from the Val Carlos—this was no more than a reconnaissance thrown out by Morillo. Also he got news from the Alduides valley of the arrival of A. Campbell’s Portuguese brigade at Eugui—he deduced from this information, joined to the report about Morillo, a turning movement against his left flank, by forces of unknown but probably considerable strength. Lastly, by drawing in Villatte’s division to his main body, he had left open a gap on his right, between his own positions in front of Elizondo and those of Leval at Santesteban. He was seized with a panic fear lest another British column might pour into this gap, by the mountain roads leading from Lanz and Almandoz into the middle Bastan[751]. And, indeed, Wellington had started the 7th Division on one of these passes, the Puerto de Arraiz—but it was still 20 miles away.

Already on the night of the 4th Gazan had written to the King that he must ask for leave to make his stand at the Maya pass, rather than to hold all the minor defiles which converge into the Bastan—a complicated system of tracks whose defence involved a terrible dissemination of forces. By noon on the 5th, having seen Wellington’s arrival with Da Costa’s brigade, he made up his mind that if the enemy attacked him frontally it must be to engage his attention, while encircling columns closed in upon his flanks and rear, from the Alduides on the one side and the western passes on the other. When the movement against his front began, his troops in the position by Ziga retired, without waiting to receive the attack, and took cover behind Villatte’s division, drawn up on the heights of Irurita. Hill had to spend time in re-forming his lines before he could resume the offensive; but when he did so against Villatte’s troops, they gave way in turn, and retired behind Maransin’s division, which was now placed above the village of Elizondo. In this way the enemy continued to retire by échelons, without allowing the pursuers to close, until by dusk he stood still at last at the Col de Maya, where he offered battle. Gazan was extremely well satisfied with himself, and considered that he had made a masterly retreat in face of overwhelming hostile forces. As a matter of fact he had been giving way, time after time, to mere demonstrations by a force of little more than half his own strength—four weak brigades were pushing back his six. But he never made a long enough stand to enable him to discover the very moderate strength of the pursuers. The whole business was a field day exercise—the total casualties only reached a few scores on each side. Gazan’s elaborate narrative about the various occasions on which British vanguards were surprised to run into heavy fire, suffered heavily, and had to halt, find its best comment in the fact that the total loss of English and Portuguese during three days of petty combats was only 5 officers and 119 men, and that this day, July 5, was the least bloody of the three.

Well satisfied to have manœuvred the enemy out of the Bastan without any appreciable loss to himself, Wellington accepted the challenge which the Army of the South offered him by halting on the Maya positions. But he waited for the 7th Division to come up, rightly thinking that the two British and two Portuguese brigades hitherto employed were too weak a force, now that the enemy showed signs of making his final stand. The 7th Division, acting under the senior brigadier, Barnes, for Lord Dalhousie had been left behind to conduct the blockade of Pampeluna, had marched on the 4th, the day when Hill was commencing to push the French north of the Col de Velate. Wellington had intended from the first that it should take a route which would enable it to turn Gazan’s right: it went north from Marcalain, where it had concentrated on giving up its blockading work, by Lizaso, to the pass of Arraiz, by which it descended into the Bastan on the 6th. It then occupied Santesteban, from which Leval’s division had been withdrawn by Gazan at the same moment at which he fell back himself on to the pass of Maya. Pending its arrival Wellington remained halted in front of the French positions for the whole of the 6th, filling the enemy with various unjustifiable fears; for they over-valued his strength, and credited him with much more ambitious projects than those which he really entertained. This halt on the 6th seemed to them to cover some elaborate snare, while its real purpose was only to allow him to make his next move with 14,000 instead of with 8,000 men. The plan for the morning of the 7th was that Hill’s column should attack the Maya positions in front, while the 7th Division should cross the Bidassoa at Santesteban, and take a mountain road which would bring it out upon the flank of Gazan’s line, which rested on the Peak of Atchiola. This would be a hard day’s march by a rough track, along interminable crests and dips. Meanwhile, on July 8th, another British unit would come up: the Light Division was relieved at Pampeluna by the 4th Division on the 5th, and following in the track of Barnes, Charles Alten was to be at Santesteban on the night of the 7th, and at the fighting front by the next morning.

The halt which Wellington imposed on his leading column upon July 6th gave time for the French Higher Command to make an astounding series of blunders. To discriminate between true and false reports is one of the most difficult tasks for any general, and the faculty of making a correct decision after receiving a number of contradictory data is undoubtedly one of the best tests of military ability. All men may err—but greater errors have seldom been made in a day than those of Jourdan and King Joseph on July 6th. They started, perhaps naturally, with the leading idea that Wellington was about to undertake the invasion of France on a grand scale. Where would the blow fall? Graham had been quiescent for some days on the Bidassoa, and it was obvious that the troops on his front were mainly Spaniards—the Army of Galicia and Longa’s Cantabrians were alone visible. Gazan, though making constant complaints that he was outnumbered and oppressed by a ‘triple force’, had not as yet accounted for anything but Hill’s corps as present in his front. Where, then, was the rest of Wellington’s army? The concentration of troops in front of Pampeluna had been ascertained—what had become of them? Now Conroux at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port kept sending in messages of alarm. Morillo’s reconnaissances had induced him to push most of his division forward to watch the passes in his front, and he reported Byng’s brigade at Roncesvalles as a considerable accumulation of British troops. Then came the news that A. Campbell’s Portuguese brigade had entered the Alduides valley, by descending which it could cut in between Conroux and the rest of the army. Probably it was the over-emphasis of Conroux’s cries of warning which set the King and Jourdan wrong—but whatever the cause, they jumped to the conclusion that the serious invasion was to come on the inland flank—that Byng and Campbell were the forerunners of a great force marching to turn their left, by Roncesvalles and the eastern passes. Acting on this utterly erroneous hypothesis, they issued a series of orders for the hasty transference of great bodies of troops towards St. Jean-Pied-du-Port. Leval’s division of the Army of the South—which had retired to Echalar after evacuating Santesteban—Cassagne’s and Darmagnac’s divisions of the Army of the Centre—which had handed over the Bastan to Gazan and retired to St. Pée—and Thouvenot’s provisional division of troops of the Army of the North[752], from the Lower Bidassoa, were all started off by forced marches to join Conroux at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port. Only Reille with the four divisions of the Army of Portugal was left to face Graham[753], and Gazan was directed to hold the Maya positions with Maransin’s and Villatte’s divisions and Gruardet’s brigade alone. Thus, while Wellington was about to deliver his rather leisurely blow at the French centre, all the enemy’s reserves were sent off to their extreme left. Nothing could have been more convenient to the British general, if he had attacked one or two days later on the Maya front, when the troops on the move would all have got past him on their way south-eastward. But as he made his assault the day after the King’s orders were issued, it resulted that the marching columns were passing just behind the part of the enemy’s line at which he was aiming, so that Gazan had more supports at hand than might have been expected. But this was neither to the credit of the King, who had not intended to provide them, nor to the discredit of Wellington, who could not possibly have foreseen such strategical errors as those in which his enemy was indulging.

On the morning of July 7th Gazan was in battle order at Maya, with Maransin’s division and Gruardet’s brigade holding the pass, and the heights on each side of it from the hill of Alcorrunz on the west to the rock of Aretesque on the east. Villatte’s division (commanded on this day by its senior brigadier, Rignoux, for Villatte was sick) formed the reserve, on the high road to Urdax, behind the main crest. Wellington’s simple form of attack was to send O’Callaghan’s brigade to turn the French left by a mountain road, Cameron’s brigade to seize the peak of Atchiola beyond his extreme right, so as to outflank Gazan on that side, to demonstrate with the Portuguese and his two batteries in the centre, and to wait for the crucial moment when the 7th Division, on the march since the morning by the hill road from Santesteban to Urdax, should appear in the enemy’s rear. Then a general assault would take place.

The scheme did not work out accurately. The Portuguese demonstrated, as was ordered. O’Callaghan’s brigade accomplished its turning movement, and got into contact with Remond’s brigade of Maransin’s division, on the extreme French left at the rock of Aretesque. Cameron’s brigade took the hill of Alcorrunz without difficulty, but was then held up by the bulk of Villatte’s division, which came up from the rear and held the crest of the Atchiola with six battalions; it could not be dislodged. So far so good—the enemy was engaged all along the line and had used up three-fourths of his reserve. But early in the afternoon a dense fog set in, and the 7th Division never appeared in the enemy’s rear. It had got involved in the darkness, lost its way, and wandered helpless. Wherefore the other attacks were never pressed. ‘If the 7th Division had arrived in time, and the sea fog had held off for an hour or two, we should have made a good thing of it,’ wrote Wellington to Graham[754]. ‘Our loss is about 60 wounded—on the other days; (4th and 5th) there was a good deal of firing, but we sustained no loss at all.’

Early on the morning of July 8 Gazan, after having written a most insincere report concerning the skirmish of the preceding day, combat des plus opiniâtres, in which he had checked the enemy with loss, abandoned the Maya positions before he was again attacked. He had the impudence to write to Jourdan that he had only recoiled because Head-Quarters refused to send him any supports[755]. As a matter of fact the King had checked the progress of the troops marching to St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, and was sending them straight to Urdax and Ainhoue, where all the four divisions arrived on the 8th, early in the day. If Gazan had chosen to hold on to the pass he would have had 15,000 men added to his strength by the evening. But he went off at 6 a.m., and Hill occupied the crest an hour later. Wellington was so far from intending any further advance that he wrote that afternoon to Graham that he was now at leisure to take a look at the whole line of the Bidassoa down to the sea, and intended to pay his lieutenant a visit. A day later he told Lord Bathurst that ‘the whole of our right being now established on the frontier, I am proceeding to the left to superintend the operations there’—which meant in the main the siege of St. Sebastian. The troops which had been brought up to the Bastan took up permanent quarters—the Light Division at Santesteban, the 7th at Elizondo, Hill’s two British brigades at the Maya positions, to which artillery was brought up, while Ashworth’s and Da Costa’s Portuguese were set to guard the minor eastern passes which open from the Bastan into the Alduides, or Val de Baygorri—the Col d’Ispegui and the Col de Berderis. They connected themselves with A. Campbell’s Portuguese brigade, which watched the southern exit from that long French valley. Campbell, for his part, had to keep touch along the frontier with Byng and Morillo in the Roncesvalles country. The 3rd, 4th, and 6th Divisions still lay round Pampeluna, anxiously expecting to be relieved by the Army of Reserve of Andalusia. But Henry O’Donnell, though due on the 12th, did not appear and take over the blockade till the 16th-17th. This delay began to worry Wellington a few days later, but on the 8th-9th he was still content with the position of affairs, rightly judging that the enemy was in no condition to make a push in any direction, till he should have got his troops rested, his artillery replaced, and his transport reorganized.

Otherwise he could not have taken so lightly the fact that opposite the Maya positions the enemy had now accumulated six and a half divisions, expecting to be attacked by columns descending from the Bastan within the next few days. Joseph and Jourdan spent an immense amount of unnecessary pains in the hurried shifting of troops, during the short space that intervened before the thunderbolt which was coming from Germany fell on their unlucky heads. But who, in their position, could have guessed that a mainly political consideration was intervening, to prevent Wellington from undertaking that invasion of France which seemed his obvious military duty?

One last measure of precaution on their adversary’s part modified the front at the end of the petty campaign of the Bastan—but by that time Joseph and Jourdan were gone. On July 15th Wellington made up his mind that the defensive position on the lower Bidassoa, by which he was covering the siege of St. Sebastian, was not safe on its inland flank, where the French were still in possession of the town of Vera, at the gorge of the Bidassoa, where it emerges from its high upland course in the Bastan. Vera and its bridge presented an obvious point of concentration for a force intending to trouble the right wing of Graham’s corps. Wherefore it was necessary to clear the enemy out of this point of vantage, and to shorten the line between Hill in the Bastan and Giron on the lower Bidassoa. Uncertain as to whether the French would make a serious stand or not, Wellington ordered up large forces—the 7th Division and the newly-arrived Light Division from Santesteban, Longa, and one brigade of Giron’s Galicians from the covering troops. But the enemy—Lamartinière’s division of Reille’s army—offered only a rearguard action, and withdrew to the other side of the hills which separate the Bastan from the coast region—abandoning the ‘Puertos’ or passes of Vera and Echalar. They feared that the advance of the allied left centre might be the prelude to a general attack, and began to make preparations to receive it. But their anxiety disappeared when it became clear that Wellington only wanted Vera and its defile, and had no further offensive purpose. The Light Division occupied Vera: the 7th, extending to the right, took over the pass of Echalar and got into touch with Hill’s advanced guard at Maya.

SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER V

EXIT KING JOSEPH

While Wellington was pressing his victorious advance to the Ebro, the Emperor Napoleon had been so entirely engrossed in the management of his own great campaign in Saxony that he had little or no time to spare for considering the affairs of Spain. King Joseph had continued to receive dispatches from Paris, which purported to set forth his brother’s orders and commands. But, as he well knew, they were really the compositions of the War-Minister Clarke, who, from the general directions which the Emperor had left when departing for Germany, and such curt comments as intermittently came back from Dresden or Wittenberg, used to construct lectures or critical essays, which he tried to make appropriate to the last news that came up from Spain. The original instructions were completely out of date, and no new general scheme of operations could be got out of Napoleon, who could only find time to make commentaries of a caustic kind on any correspondence that came from beyond the Pyrenees[756]. Clarke’s dispatches to the King were quite useless, and they were often offensive in tone—it is clear that the minister took a personal pleasure in making sarcastic observations on the conduct of the war in Spain, which he could foist on King Joseph as his brother’s composition. They generally arrived at moments which made them particularly absurd reading—what could be more annoying to the King than to be told that Wellington’s Army was a wreck, and that there was little chance of the Allies taking the offensive, at the very moment when the French Head-Quarters was moving ever northward, pushed on by what seemed in the eyes of Joseph and Jourdan to be overwhelming numbers? It was absurd to be given hints on the defence of the Douro when the retreating host was already on the Ebro, or lectures on the advantages of the line of the Ebro, when the Pyrenees had already been crossed. The habit of Clarke, however, which most irritated the King, was that of corresponding directly with the minor army-commanders in Spain, over the head of the nominal commander-in-chief[757]. Joseph held very strongly to the opinion that a main part of his disasters was due to Clarke’s dispatches to Clausel and Suchet, which gave those generals excellent excuses for ignoring orders from Head-Quarters, and carrying out their own designs, under pretence that they were more consonant with the Emperor’s intentions than the directions which came to them from Madrid, Valladolid, or Burgos.

But the Emperor’s attention was at last attracted to Spain by a disaster which could not be overlooked, or ignored as a passing worry. The news of Vittoria reached him at Dresden on July 1—nine days after the battle had been lost—forwarded by Clarke with imperfect details. For the minister could only transmit a second-hand narrative written by Foy, who had not been present at the battle, and Joseph’s first short note from Yrurzun, dated July 23rd, which concealed much and told little. There was, however, enough information to rouse the Emperor to wild rage. He had three weeks before (June 4) concluded the armistice of Plässwitz with the allied sovereigns, so that he was not entirely absorbed in the details of his own strategy, and could at last find time to devote some attention to the affairs of Spain, whose consideration he had been putting off from week to week all through the last two months. His own situation was still perilous enough—he was uncertain whether he could come to terms with Russia and Prussia, despite of his recent victories. And the idea that Austria might be meaning mischief, and not merely playing for the enviable position of general arbitrator between the belligerents, was already present. But at least he was not wholly occupied by the strategical and tactical needs of each day, and could turn to contemplate the Spanish campaign as part of the European crisis. The exasperating thing was not so much that the Imperial arms had suffered a hideous affront, though this was a not unimportant consideration, which might encourage Alexander and Frederick William III to renew the war. It was rather that the position of Spain, as a counter in the negotiations which were going on at Prague, was completely changed. On May 25th the Franco-Spanish kingdom of Joseph Bonaparte made an imposing appearance—Madrid was still occupied, and a solid block of territory from the Esla to the Guadalaviar—more than half the Peninsula—showed on the map as part of the Napoleonic empire. On July 1 it was known that the King was a fugitive on the French border, that the Castiles, Leon, Navarre, and Biscay had all been lost, that Valencia would certainly, and Aragon probably, go the same way within a week or two. The pretence that Joseph was King of Spain had suddenly become absurd. In continuing the hagglings at Prague for a new European settlement, it would be ludicrous to insist on the restoration to Madrid of a king whose only possessions beyond the Pyrenees were a few scattered fortresses. For Catalonia, it must be remembered, did not count as part of Joseph’s kingdom; it had been formally annexed to France by the iniquitous decree of February 1812[758].

It was a bitter blow to the new Charlemagne to see the largest of his vassal-kingdoms suddenly torn from him, by a stroke dealt by an enemy whom he affected to despise, while his attention had been distracted for the moment to the Elbe and the Oder. The unexampled rapidity of the campaign of Vittoria was astounding—there was nothing to compare with it in recent military history, save his own overrunning of the Prussian monarchy in the autumn of 1806. Wellington’s army had crossed the Tormes on May 26th—by June 26th King Joseph was a fugitive in France, and the main French Army of Spain was pouring back as a disorganized rabble across the passes of the Pyrenees. The whole affair seemed incredible—even ludicrous[759]—the armies of King Joseph still appeared on the imperial muster-rolls as well over 100,000 strong, not including Suchet’s forces on the East Coast. It was only a month or so back that the Emperor had been comforting himself with the idea that Wellington could not put 40,000 British troops in the field, and was no longer a serious danger[760]. Obviously the only explanation of the disaster must be colossal incapacity in the French Higher Command in Spain, amounting to criminal negligence. That there might be another explanation, viz. that a war could not be successfully conducted in those pre-telegraphic days by orders sent from five hundred miles away, by dispatches liable to constant delay or loss, and by a commander-in-chief much distracted by other business, hardly occurred to him[761]. His own system of managing the affairs of Spain, as has been set forth in many earlier pages of this book[762], was really the source of all evil. His nominal transference of the supreme command to King Joseph had been a solemn farce, because he still permitted interference by the minister at Paris, acting in his name, tolerated private reports from army-commanders, which were concealed from the King, and refused to allow of the punishment of flagrant instances of disobedience to his vicegerent’s commands.

This perhaps the Emperor could hardly be expected to see. The news of Vittoria having arrived, a culprit had to be sought, and the culprit was obviously King Joseph, who with a magnificent army at his disposal, and a good military situation, had allowed himself to be turned out of Spain by a contemptible enemy. It went for nothing that the unfortunate monarch had repeatedly asked for leave to abdicate, and had demonstrated again and again that he was not allowed the real authority of a commander-in-chief. The blame must be laid on his shoulders, and he must be disgraced at once—not with too great public scandal, for after all he was the Emperor’s brother—but in the manner which would prove most wounding to his own feelings. ‘All the fault was his ... if there was one man wanting in the army it was a real general, and if there was one man too many with the army it was the King[763].’ Clarke was told to write to him a dispatch which not only superseded him in command, and deprived him of even the services of his own Royal Guard, but put him under a sort of arrest. He was on no account to go to Paris. ‘The importance of the interests that are at stake in the North, and the effect that your Majesty’s appearance could not fail to produce on public opinion—both in Europe at large and more especially in France—are so great, that the Emperor is constrained to issue his formal orders that your Majesty should stop at Pampeluna or St. Sebastian, or at least come no further than Bayonne.... Extraordinary precautions have been taken to prevent the newspapers from mentioning either the event of June 21st [the battle of Vittoria], or the Emperor’s decision concerning your Majesty.... It is at Bayonne, where the Emperor foresees that your Majesty has probably arrived, that his further intentions will be signified, when he has acquired full information as to the recent events. It is his definite order that your Majesty should come no further into France, nor most especially to Paris, under any pretext whatever. For the same reasons no officer of your Majesty’s suite, and none of the Spanish exiles, must come beyond the Garonne. They may be directed to establish themselves at Auch.’

But though this was bad enough, the greatest insult in King Joseph’s eyes was that he was directed to hand over the command of the army and his own Guards to his old enemy Soult, whose expulsion from Spain he had procured with so much difficulty, and whom he had denounced to the Emperor as selfish, disloyal, disobedient, and perjured, ‘the author of that infamous letter found at Valencia[764]’ which had accused the King of conspiring with the Cadiz Cortes against the interests of his own brother. When Soult had returned from Spain the Emperor had decided that all the accusations against him were frivolous, ‘des petitesses.’ He might not be an amiable character—how many of the marshals were?—but he had ‘the only military brain in the Peninsula’. He was not given the command of any of the army corps in Saxony, nor any administrative post of importance, but kept at Head-Quarters, at the Emperor’s disposition, for two whole months. Apparently even before the news of Vittoria arrived, his master had thought of sending him back to Spain, but had postponed the scheme, because he did not desire an open breach with his brother. But when Joseph’s débâcle was announced, the Marshal received orders to leave Dresden at a few hours’ notice, to call upon Clarke at Paris on the way, in order to pick up the latest military information, and then to assume the command at Bayonne at the earliest possible moment. He was posted up in all the Emperor’s latest political and military schemes—even, as it seems, entrusted with the secret that if matters went very badly it might be necessary to open secret negotiations with the Cadiz Regency, on the base that the Emperor might restore Ferdinand VII to his subjects, and withdraw all his troops from Spain, if the Cortes could be persuaded to make a separate peace, and to repudiate the British alliance[765]. It seems to have escaped Napoleon’s observation that the return of the ultra-conservative and narrow-minded Ferdinand would be the last thing desired by the Liberal party now dominant in the Cortes. But all the disappointments of the treaty of Valençay were still in the far future.

Among the instructions entrusted to Soult, for use if they should prove necessary, was a warrant authorizing him to put Joseph under arrest, if he should openly flout his brother’s orders to halt at Bayonne, and should show any intention of setting out for Paris. This warrant had actually to be employed—the most maddening insult of all in the eyes of the King—it made his treacherous enemy into his jailer, as he complained.

Joseph received the first notice of his supersession from the mouth of the Senator Roederer, who had been sent off by Clarke a few hours in advance of Soult, in order that there might not be any scandalous scene, such as might have occurred if the Marshal had presented himself in person to inform the King of his fate. Roederer had served under Joseph as King of Naples, was friendly to him, and broke the unpleasant tidings as tactfully as he could. The results were what might have been expected—the unfortunate monarch said that he had realized that he must go, that he was already drafting another act of abdication. But it was an insult to send Soult to take over the command, after all the proofs of the Marshal’s perversity and disloyalty which he had forwarded to the Emperor. He did not object to being deposed, or imprisoned, or put on his trial for treason, but he did object to being made the prisoner of Soult. ‘As often as he got on this topic his Majesty grew quite frantic[766].’

But when Soult presented himself next morning there was no scene. The King handed him over his papers and dispatches, and said that he intended to establish himself in a country house just outside the gates of Bayonne (July 12). Three days later, however, he made a sudden and secret departure, and was well on the way to Bagnères de Bigorre before his escape was discovered. He had to be pursued, stopped by force, and shown the imperial warrant which authorized Soult to put him under arrest. For eight days he was a prisoner at the Château of Poyanne, when a dispatch arrived from Dresden, in which the Emperor said that he might be allowed to retire to his own estate of Mortefontaine, on condition that he saw no one, and never visited Paris [July 24]. If he should make himself a centre of intrigues, and should fail to realize that he was in disgrace, the Minister of Police had orders to imprison him[767].

And thus Joseph disappears from the purview of students of the Peninsular War, though he was to have one more short moment of notoriety in the following spring, when he was made the nominal head of the Council of Regency, which purported to govern France for a few weeks, before the Northern Allies forced their way into the French capital. He did not shine in that capacity, and would have done better to content himself with escaping the notice of the world in the semi-captivity to which his brother had condemned him in July 1813. But Joseph, however much he might deny the impeachment, loved a prominent place, however incapable he might be of filling it in a competent fashion.

This, indeed, is the secret of his whole unfortunate career. The chance which made him the brother of Napoleon put within his grasp ambitions with which his very moderate talents could not cope. He was by no means a bad man: the Spaniards would gladly have drawn him as a tyrant or a monster, if it had been possible to do so; but had to content themselves with representing him as a ludicrous and contemptible character, ‘Pepe Botellas’[768], a comic-opera king, too much addicted to wine and women, and tricked by his courtiers and mistresses. There seems no reason to suppose that the charge of inebriety had any particular foundation; but Joseph—long separated from his wife by the chances of war—undoubtedly sought consolations in more than one other quarter at Madrid. His amatory epistles and souvenirs, captured in his carriage at Vittoria, provoked a smile and a caustic remark from Wellington. As to the taunt that he was continually cheated and exploited by those about him, there is no doubt that the unfortunate King was possessed of the delusion that his personal charm and affable manners won all hearts; he wasted much time in cajoling every person of any importance with whom he came in contact, and had many sad moments of disillusion, when he discovered that supposed friends had failed him. His most persistent and dangerous error was that he imagined that he could win over the Spaniards to his cause, by generous treatment and emotional speeches. For years he went on enlisting in his ‘national army’ every prisoner who was willing to save himself a tramp to a French prison, by taking an easy oath of allegiance. When given arms and uniforms they deserted: first and last Joseph enlisted 60,000 Spaniards in his leaky regiments—about 1,500 crossed the Bidassoa with him at the moment of his fall. With those above the rank and file he was a little more successful, because officers and politicians were marked men, when once they had risked their necks by forswearing their allegiance to Ferdinand VII. They knew that there would be no such easy pardon for them as was granted to the common soldier. There had been moments of intense depression for the Spanish cause, such as those following the capture of Madrid in December 1808, and the invasion of Andalusia in 1810, at which many timid or selfish souls had despaired of the game, and had taken service with the adversary. Having once done so it was impossible to go back—hence the King, when his star began to wane, was overloaded with hundreds, and even thousands, of downhearted and pessimistic dependants, who had no faith in his ultimate triumph, yet still hung on to his skirts, and petitioned for the doles which he was no longer able to give them. Few served him zealously—those who did were in the main adventurers as destitute of morality as of national feeling, who strove for their own profit rather than their master’s—his prefects and intendants had villainous reputations for the most part.

Though vain and self-confident, Joseph was entirely lacking in backbone—he endured all the Emperor’s insults and taunts without any real feeling of resentment, though he protested loudly enough. Unlike his brothers, Lucien and Louis, he never dared to set his will against Napoleon’s—his threatened abdications never became realities. He pretended that his submission was the result of loyalty and brotherly affection—in reality he had an insufficient sense of righteous indignation and self-respect, and an exaggerated love of royalty—even of its shadow. An intelligent French observer summed up his character in the following curious phrases:

‘The King’s most striking characteristic is his easy temper. It does not come from a generous heart or a real magnanimity, but from a facile disposition and a total absence of decision. He has not the courage to refuse to do things which his own reason condemns, and is often guilty of acts which he himself acknowledges to be unwise. At bottom he is an honest man, but he has not the firmness to maintain his principles if he is pressed and harried. Tiresome solicitation may induce him to cast aside principle and act like a rogue. His greatest hobby is a belief in his own finesse—a great perspicacity in discovering the secret and selfish motives of those about him. He often gives them credit for more Machiavellian ingenuity than they really possess. He does not always withdraw his favour from those whom he has discovered cheating him, but rejoices in making them feel that he has found out their private designs. He is incapable of owning that he has done an injustice: when he discovers that he has wronged one of his followers, he shirks meeting him, and tries to get rid of him by circuitous methods. Hence he often persists in acts of injustice, because he is ashamed of confessing himself to have been mistaken.’

The natural result of this lack of moral backbone was that Joseph was systematically disobeyed and cheated. Very little was to be feared from his anger, much could be got by threatening or worrying him. It is true that he was much handicapped by the constant interference of the Emperor, and even of the French Minister of War, in all his attempts to create a Spanish administration, and to co-ordinate the efforts of the various armies in the Peninsula. Nevertheless there was much truth in his brother’s savage comments on his character—‘he cannot get himself obeyed’—‘he has neither military talent nor administrative ability’—‘he does not know how to draw up accounts’—he ‘cannot command an army himself, but he can prevent other and more competent people from doing so’—‘the greatest moral error is to take up a profession which one does not understand: that the King was not a professional soldier was not his fault, but he was responsible for trying to be one[769].’ To this last and perfectly just remark Joseph could have made an unanswerable reply, by asking who was responsible for the promotion of a person who was not, and never could be, a professional soldier, to the post of Commander-in-Chief of all the Armies of Spain.

It is only fair to concede to this unlucky prince his good qualities: he was never cruel—no usurper ever shed so little blood: he was a good master to many ungrateful servants: he was courteous and considerate, liberal so far as his scanty means allowed, and interested in literature and art. Unfortunately his artistic tastes brought him only ridicule. He was greatly given to pulling down slums and eyesores in Madrid, but never had the money to replace them by the stately buildings which he had designed—his good intentions were only shown by empty spaces—whence the people called him El rey Plazuelos. This was rather to his credit than otherwise—less so the interest in art shown by his eleventh-hour pilfering of the best pictures of the Madrid Galleries, of which Wellington recaptured a selection at Vittoria. To sum him up in a single phrase, Joseph Bonaparte was the mildest mannered man who ever stole a crown—or rather acted as receiver of a crown stolen by his ruthless brother.

With King Joseph his Chief-of-the-Staff went into the depths of disgrace. Napoleon wrote that he never wanted to hear of Jourdan again. He must go into complete retirement at his estate of Coudray near Orleans. He was cut down to the strictest minimum of retired pay—not over 20,000 francs a year[770], which left him in miserable straits—for he had a large family, and he was honest, and had never feathered his nest like other marshals. The only notice to be taken of him was that he was to be ordered to draw up a memorandum explaining how the battle of Vittoria had been fought and lost—if any explanation were possible[771]. But Napoleon, when he pardoned Joseph a few months later, pardoned Jourdan also. He was given the command of the Rouen Military District, where he did competent administrative work in the spring of 1814, so far as his broken health permitted. It is surprising to find that, with all his ailments, this worthy old officer—the Cassandra of the great drama of 1812-13—survived till 1833, when he died, after having been for many years Governor of the Invalides. His military memoirs, first published in a scattered and incomplete form in Ducasse’s Life and Correspondence of Joseph Bonaparte, and afterwards in a better shape so late as 1908, form one of the best critical commentaries on the Peninsular War. As a purveyor of hard truths concerning his imperial master, and the marshals who were his colleagues in Spain, Jourdan has no rival.